Metaphors in the History of Economic Thought

Roberto Baranzini is a professor in economics and in the history and philosophy of economics at the Centre Walras-Pareto, University of Lausanne, Switzerland. His research covers the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, focusing on the work of Léon Walras and on the Ecole de Lausanne until the 1960s. Daniele Besomi is senior research fellow at the Centre Walras-Pareto, University of Lausanne, Switzerland. His research centres on the history of business cycles and crises theories, and his writings include some on the key metaphors used frequently by writers on the subjects.

Introduction, Pt. I: Crises, 1. Economic crises in nineteenth century Italy: a cultural analysis, 2. Clément Juglar’s epistemic use of metaphors, 3. Riders on the Storm: W. Stanley Jevons, Meteorology and the Analysis of ‘Commercial Fluctuations’, Pt. II: Business cycles, 4. Stitching Things Together. Marshall on the economy as an “organic whole”, 5. Differentiation, integration, and the great variety of organisms: biological origins of Werner Sombart’s business cycle theory, 6. Biological, Medical and Physical Metaphors in Germán Bernácer’s Theory of Business Cycles (1916–1936), 7. The nature of monetary disturbances in Austrian and Swedish business cycle theories, 8. How economics failed to understand crises. Constitutive metaphors in business cycle analysis, from Frisch to Real Business Cycles, Pt. III: Equilibrium, 9. The pendulum and equilibrium: A survey, 10. Statistical equilibrium in early 20th century Italian economics