File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9801, message 299


Date: 	Wed, 14 Jan 1998 11:13:22 -0800
From: bhandari-AT-phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Rakesh Bhandari)
Subject: M-TH: Cycles and Prediction


Doug got me right (and thanks for the added info on Michael's commercial
interest in Korea).

"The IMF says 'a substantially more pronounced and prolonged' Asian crisis
could reduce industrial-nation growth to 1.6% in 1998. Economists aren't
good at seeing the big shifts. As Victor Zarnowitz, a business cycle
scholar, puts it: 'The very occurence of a recession is an unsolved puzzle.
There is no generally accepted explanation of why a normally
well-functioning economy of a country with growing population and other
productive resources should repeatedly suffer overall declines in
eomployment, production, real income and sales.' WSJ, 1/5/98, A1

Zarnowitz has written a big book on business cycles; it is relied on by
Steven Webber in an article for a recent *Foreign Affairs* about the
conquest of the business cycle in the new economy .  I haven't read these
books by Zarnowitz, Richard Gordon (ed) or Howard Sherman on the the US
trade cycle. So if Doug or Jerry want to share their thoughts at any time,
please do.

 I would like to make the distinction, in reply to Jurriaan, between the
prediction and explanation of cyclical downturns. But that will have to be
put off until I read Leswek Nowak, as well as Peter Manicas who develops
this distinction in his History and Philosophy of Social Science, several
rewarding chapters of which I have read.  David Hillel Ruben, once a
Marxist philosopher, has also written an introduction to *Explaining
Explanation*, which like so many important books has been sitting on my
desk unread for too long.

Rakesh




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