Study week on the econometric approach to development planning

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1824422792

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-217476

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Study week on the econometric approach to development planning

Place of publication:: Amsterdam [u.a.]

Publisher:: North-Holland Publ. Co. [u.a.]

Year of publication:: 1965

Scope:: XLVII, 1259 S.; graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: The analysis of economic systems / Richard Stone, Cambridge University - Cambridge - Great Britain

Collection:: Economics Books

SEMAINE D'ÉTUDE SUR LE ROLE DE L’ANALYSE ECONOMETRIOQOUE ETC. 111 STONF I should like to thank you all for the very interesting discussion on my paper and I am sure that you will forgive me if I do not attempt to reply individually but merely try to summarise the posi- tion. In 1927 the biologist J.B.S. HALDANE published a book called Possible Worlds in which he tried to examine how far certain things were possible from the standpoint of physical, chemical or biological laws. Could one imagine, for example, an elephant ten times larger than the elephants that are actually known? And, if not, what was it that prevented us from imagining that such animals could exist? My type of model building, and, I think, many other people’s model building too, is concerned with doing exactly the same sort of thing for an economic system: we should like to obtain certain results; could we imagine that they could come about? Now one may ask the question: how is one to decide such things? And this seems to me to get to the heart of the difference between predictive models and models which aim at projections based on hypotheses about changes that might be introduced into the world. If we assume that the world will continue to work as it has in the past, and if we do not like some of the consequences of this, we may ask: could we change things for the better? The answer is not necessarily « yes » but, equally, it is not necessarily « no », because the way in which the world in fact works is not by definition the best possible way. It seems to me that in trying to decide questions of this kind one must follow the principle that upholders of laissez-faire claim that laissez- faire maintains, namely the maximising principle: that wherever you see economic action taking place it is always successfully directed to maximising something that one wants to have maximised. Now if this were actually the case there would be very little need to build models because we should already have a perfect system which could not be improved. It can only be in the belief that this is not actually the case that we have interested ourselves in the rather exacting anc energetic pursuit of economic model building. Another question that came up and which I think is wotiu | Stone - pag. 109

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