"On the Disappearance of Land and Natural Resources from Neoclassical Economics, United States, 1890s-1920s" Antonin POTTIER, EHESS, CIRED, Paris

Séminaire en française ouvert à tous

Abstract : It is well known that the late 19th century move from classical political economy to neoclassical economics led to the consideration of only two factors of production – capital and labor – instead of three – capital, labor and land. The disappearance of land and natural resources has been explained in various ways: by the prominence of industry in the modern economy, by the insistence of neoclassical economists on consumption and exchange rather than production, even by their supposed political crusade against Georgism. In all cases, the disappearance has often been presented as sudden and consensual, especially in the United States. This article revisits this structuring episode in the history of economics, showing the pre-eminence of hesitating theoretical arguments in American economists’ justification of the two-factor divide, and highlighting that land and natural resources actually did not disappear but underwent an analytical downgrading, being still mobilized for the study of particular cases or in applied economics. We further show that this downgrading took time, with many to-ing and fro-ing in the consideration of natural agents by foreground American economists from the 1890s to the 1920s (John Bates Clark, Irving Fisher, Frank Taussig), and that other theoretical paths, such as Alvin S. Johnson’s split of the fund of capital into artificial and natural capital, could have been followed, even within the marginalist context. This suggests that there was no fatality in seeing natural resources in the background of neoclassical economics. [Note : l'intervention se fera en français]