undercoverhist.bsky.social's avatar

undercoverhist.bsky.social

@undercoverhist.bsky.social

1959 followers 1488 following 267 posts

Historian of applied economics (macro, public, urban, ag, env, design, tractability, computational econ & more) CNRS & CREST, Ecole Polytechnique

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ok, je ne sais pas comment on fait, mais je vais regarder après avoir corrigé mon dernier paquet de copies! Effectivement, j'ai été active a un moment sur masto.

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's avatar @undercoverhist.bsky.social
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feedback much welcome

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Longer, because the 1970s are a mess (and there are several key characters to introduce) Also, one of our two favorite moments in the archives

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S1E5: “Proof for a case where discounting advances the doomsday”

Discounting in 1970s energy models

theundercoverhistorian.substack.com/p/s1e5-proof...

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's avatar @undercoverhist.bsky.social
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btw, that's his 1979 book, so your statement that he didn't use any backstop technology in the 1970s and 1980s after 1970s needs qualification (and yes, backstop has a lot to do with breeder)

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's avatar @undercoverhist.bsky.social
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I'd say Nordhaus, in that 1973 paper where he proposes the bulldog model - the work was done with Krugman as a RA. If the idea came from Krugman, I don't know

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's avatar @undercoverhist.bsky.social
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I'm talking about Nordhaus 1973

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today's question (niche) is how much did the early 1970s hopes about the breeder reactor shaped Nordhaus's idea that modeling a "backstop technology" was the reasonable way to go

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My best guess is that this paper was written following a lunch dispute at Laxenburg in 1975

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and those who need a break (don't ask me to explain this)

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There's cutenomics, and there are those who don't fuck around

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S1E4: The equation “implicit in Ramsey”

Back to public investment decisions

(Last "early period" post. Next post is take-off)

theundercoverhistorian.substack.com/p/the-equati...

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's avatar @undercoverhist.bsky.social
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S1E4: The equation “implicit in Ramsey”

Back to public investment decisions

(Last "early period" post. Next post is take-off)

theundercoverhistorian.substack.com/p/the-equati...

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's avatar @undercoverhist.bsky.social
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you're not doing it again every year?

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Archen Minsol is arguably the best economic theorist of the 20th century (here, a Restat paper from 1968) (no joke here)

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Guess whose archives are now open for research with a detailed online finding aid?

HT @cleocz.bsky.social

lib.uchicago.edu/e/scrc/findi...

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's avatar @undercoverhist.bsky.social
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strong= *political* cover (rather than say, empirical justification)

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's avatar @undercoverhist.bsky.social
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that's a strong statement. How so?

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Reposted by undercoverhist.bsky.social

Will Wheeler's avatar Will Wheeler @willwheels1.bsky.social
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Right. One thing I think is interesting is the line from Weitzman to Newell and Pizer to Bauer and Rudebusch, which if iirc, provides the basis for OMB's schedule.

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's avatar @undercoverhist.bsky.social
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thanks. We ends just pre/around Weitzman ( our research question is the stabilization of Ramsey formula as a widespread framework for discounting and it comes with the 1995 IPCC chapter, though the latter also ends the Lind consensus). Weitzman and what came next are part of this disagreement era

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's avatar @undercoverhist.bsky.social
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... of the objective function (in which case, Pedro, my coauthor, had written a very extensive paper on the alternatives to maximizing a discounted sum of utilities that were around in the 1960s, which we use in that section of the paper papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... )

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's avatar @undercoverhist.bsky.social
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and I'm not sure what you mean by "prescriptive" here. The Ramsey formula is an "optimal condition", therefore a normative concept in the 1960s (and we argue, then it kinda becomes definitional in the IPCC chapter). Is it what you mean by prescriptive? or is it because of the welfare foundations...

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's avatar @undercoverhist.bsky.social
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That's a philosopher's question. General Equilibrium theory was not something that existed back then. My reading of Cass (1965) is that he refused to go into prescriptive analysis (he leaves ethical considerations to the last sentence of the paper)- he shows up in tomorrow's post, we can debate then

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's avatar @undercoverhist.bsky.social
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Yes, I'm starting from a loose 'applied economist' depiction of the job. A very historian's question (sorry, this is how the conversation will proceed) is how do you deal with 'Nordhaus' being an individual (+ unwilling to discuss epistemology) and 'Stern' being a team?

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's avatar @undercoverhist.bsky.social
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welfare calculation vs optimal growth theory? I should wait until I read your demonstration, but 1 ambiguity I have with refined philosophical analysis is that it always makes sense to me but is usually too "rationally reconstructed" to make sense of past modeling practices in the trenches

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in your mail box (the funniest part for me is the unrelated macro dunk)

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and maybe you disagree with our story, which would be an interesting challenge to face!

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's avatar @undercoverhist.bsky.social
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... cover the Stern/Nordhaus controversy (no archival data yet, too recent even for history interviews imo), nor the subsequent revisions of the guidelines, and I'm curious about the 'backlash' suggested in the latest round of comments on OMB

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's avatar @undercoverhist.bsky.social
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yeeeees please. First it would create an incentive for me to finish my writing (always funnier when colleagues think about related issues at the same time). Second, our narrative stops in 95-99 when the formula stabilizes, and I would be super interested in your take on what came next - we don't...

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Feel free to send feedback as the posts come in. Would be useful to downsize and clarify the paper

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I can't wait to read it (but you do agree, that, except for that book I haven't read, less attention has been paid...., right?) btw, did I ever send you the missing page of the Arrow letter?

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sorry it was cut. I didn't know this research on epistemic priority. It looks like a super interesting way to frame the "hidden figures"

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Dave Palfrey's avatar Dave Palfrey @01factory.bsky.social
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"What does and doesn’t count as a definite contribution is also the mechanism at work in the invisibilization of women from science". Can mechanisms be disaggregated here? e.g. @unsocialtheory.bsky.social has bounding, domaining, non-attribution & appropriation as 'types of epistemic positioning'

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's avatar @undercoverhist.bsky.social
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After a good 9-month gestation with Pedro Duarte, a birth assisted by the more benevolent and skilled team I could think of. Many thanks to CIRED researchers for the warm welcome and fruitful discussions

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's avatar @undercoverhist.bsky.social
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how would you summarize the biggest changes in discounting consensus since the last set of guidelines? (both in terms of numbers and underlying framework/rationale) which came up from these debates?

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's avatar @undercoverhist.bsky.social
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I have a whole coauthored paper on the history of why&how economists came to use the Ramsey formula for discounting that begins with the discussion surrounding OMB's revised A94 last year - our story ends in the late 1990s though, would be fun to talk abt updated debates on the topic

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