An Inquiry into the Ramsey-Hotelling Connection

Marion Gaspard (1) , Antoine Missemer (2)

1 TRIANGLE - Triangle : action, discours, pensée politique et économique
2 CIRED - centre international de recherche sur l'environnement et le développement

Ramsey’s 1928 paper on saving and Hotelling’s 1931 article on exhaustible resources are considered to be two seminal contributions in economic dynamics. They have been associated because of their temporal proximity, use of the calculus of variations, and because of Hotelling’s citation of Ramsey. This connection however needs to be precisely investigated and characterized. On the basis of archival material, this paper shows that, on the interpersonal and theoretical ground, the connection is quite thin, but that significant parallels are found in Ramsey’s and Hotelling’s expectations with mathematical economics for the progress of science and for informing public decision.

Mots clés: Hotelling; history of economic thought; exhaustible resources; Ramsey; saving; intertemporal distribution; dynamics; mathematical economics

Domaines: Economies et finances; Histoire, Philosophie et Sociologie des sciences

Marion Gaspard, Antoine Missemer. An Inquiry into the Ramsey-Hotelling Connection. European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2019, 26 (2), pp.352-379. ⟨10.1080/09672567.2019.1576059⟩. ⟨halshs-01934408⟩