Christian Gehrke: Vorschläge für Masterarbeitsthemen Thema 1

Christian Gehrke: Vorschläge für Masterarbeitsthemen
Thema 1: The Development of Offer Curve Analysis: From Mill to Marshall
John Stuart Mill’s introduction of reciprocal demand analysis and Alfred Marshall’s introduction of
“offer curves” have been widely appraised as major contributions to international trade theory.
Subsequently, Marshall’s analysis was refined by Edgeworth, Meade and others. The proposed Master
thesis is supposed to provide a historical reconstruction of the development of offer curve analysis in
international trade theory, with a particular focus on the early phase and on the introduction and
treatment of endowments and of non-constant returns.
References: Mill (1844), “Of the Laws of Interchange between Nations”. Marshall (1879/1930), The
Pure Theory of International Trade. Chipman (1965-66), “The Theory of International Trade”, Parts I,
II, III, Econometrica 33 (3), 33 (4), 34 (1).
Thema 2: The “Neoclassification” of International Trade Theory
Until the 1930s the classical surplus approach to the theory of value and distribution, which with the
advent of the marginalist supply-and-demand approach had long since been “submerged and
forgotten” with regard to the determination of “domestic values”, still occupied a prominent position
in international trade theory, notwithstanding the fact that the latter had been “contaminated” already
with Mill-Marshall-Edgeworth offer curve analysis. This is evident in the contributions of authors like
Taussig (1927), Graham (1932), and Viner (1937). But in the early 1930s the neoclassical approach
began to dominate also the theory of international trade, particularly through contributions by Haberler
(1932), Leontief (1933), Lerner (1932), and others. The proposed Master thesis should screen this
literature and provide a detailed account the most important theoretical developments in this critical
phase of international trade theory.
References: Taussig (1927), International Trade. Viner (1937), Studies in the Theory of International
Trade. Haberler (1936), The Theory of International Trade. Chipman (1965-66), “The Theory of
International Trade”, Parts I, II, III, Econometrica 33 (3), 33 (4), 34 (1).
Thema 3: The Modern Classical Approach and Demand-led Growth
Two recent issues of the Review of Political Economy comprise a Symposium on “The Classical
surplus approach and demand-led growth”, with seven papers by various authors. By starting out from
the contributions to this Symposium the proposed Master thesis is supposed to provide a critical
survey of the current state and the open problems in the field of demand-led growth models in the
modern classical tradition.
References: Symposium on “Pierangelo Garegnani, the Classical Surplus Approach and Demand-led
Growth”, in: Review of Political Economy, 2015, vols 27 (2) and 27 (3).
Thema 4: Alfred Amonn über Ricardo, Sismondi, und Keynes
Der österreichische Ökonom Alfred Amonn, dessen methodologische Arbeit internationale Beachtung
gefunden hat, war in seinen wirtschaftstheoretischen Beiträgen vor allem bestrebt, Vorstellungen der
Österreichischen und der Lausanner Schule der Nationalökonomie miteinander zu verbinden. Er hat
sich aber auch sehr intensiv mit klassischen Autoren wie David Ricardo und Simonde de Sismondi
auseinander gesetzt und bereits frühzeitig die neuen Ideen von John Maynard Keynes in dessen
General Theory rezipiert (und zum Teil auch aufgegriffen). Die Masterarbeit soll Amonns Arbeiten zu
Keynes, Ricardo und Sismondi vor dem Hintergrund seiner sonstigen Arbeiten und im Kontext der
Keynes-Rezeption im deutschen Sprachraum untersuchen.
Literatur:
Amonn (1924), Ricardo als Begründer der theoretischen Nationalökonomie.
Amonn (1938), Keynes‘ „Allgemeine Theorie der Beschäftigung“, Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie
und Statistik 147, S. 1-27 und 129-156.
Amonn, A. (1945/1949). Simonde de Sismondi als Nationalökonom.
Thema 5: The non-substitution theorem: A historical reconstruction
In advanced microeconomics textbooks the non-substitution theorem is often presented in a rather
distorted way in the context of intertemporal general equilibrium models (see Petri 2004). By going
back to its original formulation by Samuelson (in Koopmans, 1951), in the rather different context of
the open Leontief model, and by scrutinizing the further contributions by Arrow, Koopmans,
Samuelson, Morishima, and others the proposed Master thesis is supposed to provide a historical
reconstruction of the debates about non-substitution and to contribute to the clarification of its role in
classical and neoclassical long period analyses (as opposed to neo-Walrasian intertemporal general
equilibrium analyses).
References:
Koopmans (1951), Activity Analysis of Production and Allocation.
Petri (2004), “Non-substitution theorem”, in: General Equilibrium, Capital, and Macroeconomics, pp.
246-51.
Salvadori (2008), Entry: “Non-substitution theorem”, in Blume et al., The New Palgrave Dictionary of
Economics.

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