Re: Say's Law and Operationalism

["Alan G. Isaac" <aisaac@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Gunnar,

The idea that Samuelson got the Nobel prize
for his Correspondence Principle is prima
facie ludicrous, so until you cite supporting
text it cannot be taken seriously.  I provided
a link to the official press release.  The brief
text release is:  ``for the scientific work through
which he has developed static and dynamic
economic theory and actively contributed to
raising the level of analysis in economic science.''
And I will add that no matter how much one may
dislike the direction Samuelson took the profession,
he clearly deserved the award.

I must add that you appear to misunderstand the
Correspondence Principle.  The idea is very simple.
Suppose you write down a dynamic model and then wish
to compare static equilibrium.  Samuelson simply observes that this
makes no sense unless one can actually expect movement
from one equilibrium to the other.  Samuelson therefore
suggests doing the comparative statics of the dynamic
model only for the cases that  ``make sense'', which he
argued were the stable cases.  At the level of modeling,
it is offered as an internal consistency criterion.
(Note that I am not arguing that it is the only possible
or best criterion; I'm just expositing the concept.)

Alan Isaac