Argument
Robert Solow’s “Technical Change and the Aggregate Production Function” (1957) has had an enduring influence on macroeconomics. In this article, we examine the history of fluctuations in growth theory
through the story of the “Solow residual” as a “black box.” We show that after Solow’s seminal contribution, the “residual” became a reproducible object. Losing its ties with the intentions and beliefs of its originator, it was given new and unexpected uses in other branches of macroeconomics. While the residual had always remained a problematic result in growth accounting, its borrowing by real business cycle theorists sought to establish it as a definitive representation of technology. As the claims of the New Classicals came under scrutiny, so did the status and meaning of the object residual. The integration of growth and cycle has since been shaped by the opening of this “black box.” Edward Prescott has remained committed to his earlier interpretation of the “Solow residual” as stochastic technology. Others have sought to bracket multiple supply shocks as the residual, abandoning attempts to decompose it. To the New Keynesians the “residual” has been more evidence of market power and the need to integrate rigidities in the study of the cycle.

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Looking at the references, not many since this is a popular book, I could not find any many mentions of historians of economics, which worried me more than it bothered me. I emailed J. F. about it and he replied:

I read Ingrao and Israel’s ‘Invisible Hand’ (and I’m pretty sure I cited it in the endnotes), a few articles by E. Roy Weintraub, parts of Mirowski’s books and parts of economic histories/biographies of Jevons, Marshall, Hayek and others. But I’ve got to say I was often frustrated with these works; they would usually start off interesting but then veer off in directions that I didn’t see as important.

This, I think, is rather good. Even though there are no tips of the hat to us historians of economics in the preface or anywhere else, even though we go off on tangents that don’t seem to interest the journalist and the wider public, we are read, we are considered.

It is nice to “feel the love” from the students, and that maybe I picked the right job for me.

From Twitter Volume.

Once you place enthusiasm against its inverted self, does enthusiasm survive? One could say it’s simply dialectics, one ravages the other. But I don’t see the next step in the progression.

I see a hollow, dark place, of silence, neither positive, nor negative, instead indifferent and laughing and displaced. Maybe it is nothing to do with the song, and everything to do with where I listen to it. I am no longer there, where this satire happens with conviction and without self-perspective, so I cannot be in it, and resolve it.

(via Economix)

Enraged by the delay and missing a meeting on Monday morning, I checked the Customer Care Policies of KLM to see if I was entitled to any compensation. This is what I found:

passengers will be offered free of charge:
- meals/refreshments in a reasonable relation to the waiting
time
- hotel accommodation in cases where an (additional) overnight
stay becomes necessary (transport included)
- 2 telephone calls, fax messages or e-mails.

The item that merits comment is the 2 phone calls. I wonder what is the rationale to this. In cop movies, suspects have the right to make one phone when they are thrown into jail. KLM treats its costumers with only one more degree of generosity.

P.S. It turns out that if you don’t take the hotel, the (reasonable) meal or the 2 emails, you get nothing.

“I am not calling for a ban on this book. It’s important that you read this book. [...] And let me tell you something: Don’t dismiss these people. Don’t dismiss them.”

Violating copyright, the text is also pdfed online.