| Economic analysis has to deal with the major issue of the impact of time on economic activities.Since the birth of economics,the progress on this issue has been quite slow.Modern mainstream economics defines"economic time" in terms of natural time or logical time,uses highly abstract,formalized,and indifference measurement methodology,and then constructs increasingly sophisticated analytical models on this basis.However,the explanatory and predictive ability of economics has not increased correspondingly.The content of modern mainstream economics is mainly composed of the economic theories of two Cambridge economists,Marshall and Keynes.Therefore,this paper examines this issue from the perspective of history of thought,focusing on the economic thoughts of three representative economists of the British Cambridge School,Marshall,Keynes and Joan Robinson.Especially,this paper puts emphases on the theory of historical "economic time" proposed by Joan Robinson,an outstanding economist in the 20th century,who also has learned economics form previous two Cambridge economicstor as mainstream does,and tries to explore its important theoretical resources which have long been ignored by the academic community.First,reviewing Principles of Economics,this paper argues that Marshall has raised the difficulty and importance of dealing with time in economics.Marshall has been trying to examine the impact of time factors on economic analysis under scientific standards and reconcile the relationship between time and scientific economics.Marshall's efforts in time problem can generally be understood from four dimensions,time as description,time as metric,long-term and short-term,and unresolved.On the whole,Marshall's attempts can be seen as a special case,or as a discussion of "common sense" or "normal state",and in fact it is isolated from formal economic analysis.Until his later years,Marshall was still deeply concerned at heart about his unfinished work on handling time factor in economic analysis.Secondly,in The General Theory of Employment,Interest and Money,as Marshall's greatest student,Keynes embodied his thoughts on time issues in the economic theory of solving the inevitable cyclical unemployment and economic depression in the capitalist laissez-faire market economy.Keynes pointed out that the root of the economic depression in the short term is the lack of effective demand.It will be impacted by the consumption propensity,the expectation of future capital gains,and the liquidity preference for money.All these three basic factors are related to time.Therefore,Keynes has a clear sense of time and tries to deal with it effectively in the economic analysis.However,The General Theory of Employment,Interest,and Money has been written to explain and solve real-world problems and the basic analysis of time issues is not the emphasis of it.Therefore,Keynes did not highlight this part in his theory.Thirdly,this article chooses Introduction to Modern Economics,Joan Robinson' s late representative work,as the main text material.Placing Robinson' s theory of "economic time" in the historical course of economics since the formation of classical political economy,and comparing it with the American paradigm of economic analysis represented by Samuelson in the same period,this paper tries to accurately grasp its core connotations and characteristics,and clarifies its significance to the development of economics.This paper sorts out that Robinson's historical time method connotation includes the following three aspects:the unalterable past,undirectional time and the unpredictable future.And then I compare the specific cases based on historical time in Introduction to Modern Economics with Samuelson's related expressions on similar issues in Economics(19th Edition).With Robinson's idea of the differentiation and instability of technological change,this paper then tries to build a model based on modern economics.According to the analyses in her book and the methodology which she applied,this paper believes that Robinson is more eager to see an economic analysis method combining historical analysis with abstract theory.On this basis,this paper believes that the three generations of Cambridge school attach great importance to the time issue in economic analysis.As there are difference in the characteristics of each times,the real-world economic development paths,and the progresses of Economics,different trade-offs have been made by them.Marshall raised the importance and difficulty of time issues in economics,but did not reconcile it with the aspiration of economic science.Through psychological characteristics of people,Keynes highlighted the impact of the unknown future on the economy in theory due to changes in economic reality and multi-dimensional discussion of economics.Due to the demand of long-term and dynamic analysis paradigm of economics and the status of the discipline at that time,Robinson realized that economics urgently needs to pay attention to time factors and finally she expressed her idea as historical time.It was influenced by Marshall,Keynes and Marx(including Kalecki).In this way,she is trying to pull economics closer to the real and reliable path.Economics is a subfield of social science that has evolved with the times.This paper believes that re-examining the current development path of economics based on historical time is of great significance to the future development of the discipline,especially in the realm of the subject.In addition,on the basis of this paper,we can further explore and understand the relevant economic thoughts of the Cambridge Economics. |
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