File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-03-18.151, message 26


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




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