From: "Rosser Jr, John Barkley" <rosserjb-AT-jmu.edu> Subject: M-I: Proyect on Roemer Date: Sun, 16 Mar 1997 18:24:38 -0500 () Just a couple of minor points as I basically agree with Louis's critique of Roemer's ahistoricism: 1) Roemer did not get into this stuff by visiting G.A. Cohen, although the latter may have influenced him. He was cooking up quasi-Walrasian general equilibrium models of "exploitation" back in the 70s. 2) Although Louis lumps them together, and they both hang out in the Harvard philosophy department, there really is a pretty large gap between Nozick and Rawls (who is also more or less in the same camp as another Harvardian, Amartya Sen, a likely near-term econ Nobel Prize winner). Nozick is an individualist libertarian, or was; I hear rumors he has moderated a bit recently. Rawls may be a liberal, but the bottom line of his analysis is indeed strongly egalitarian in thrust, as is Sen's to a lesser degree. Sen makes the important very practical point that famine is a matter of political/social/economic relationships, and not one of generalized overpopulation. He has even spent a lot of time pointing out the various virtues of Keralan policy, Sen being Indian originally. 3) Although he may not have done so himself, Roemer certainly ran with an acid-dropping crowd as an undergrad at Harvard in the 60s. 4) More off to the side, again, one should not identify game theory with an assumption of rationality, even if that is an assumption that Roemer makes. Indeed, the most serious and highest level debates about the nature and possibility of rationality in economic theory are currently being fought out using game theory in the pages of such journals as _Econometrica_, _Journal of Economic Theory_, _Economic Theory_, _Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization_ (of which I am Book Review Editor), _Games and Economic Behavior_, and _International Journal of Game Theory_. This is not a pretty debate and probably one that very few on this list want to mess with. Barkley Rosser -- Rosser Jr, John Barkley rosserjb-AT-jmu.edu --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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