New developments in the history of economic thought and economic theory

• Grant number: 17/22090-2
• Support Opportunities: Research Grants - Visiting Researcher Grant - International
• Start date: March 07, 2018
• End date: March 17, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Economics - Economic Theory
• Principal Investigator: Gilberto Tadeu Lima
• Grantee: Gilberto Tadeu Lima
• Visiting researcher: Donald W. Katzner
• Visiting researcher institution: University of Massachusetts, Amherst (UMass Amherst), United States
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade (FEA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research proposal entitled "New Developments in the History of Economic Thought and Economic Theory" is intended to apply for funding with FAPESP to cover the basic expenses related to the coming of Professor Donald W. Katzner of the University of Massachusetts Amherst to visit the Department of Economics of the University of São Paulo (USP) during eleven days on March 2018. During this period Professor Katzner will interact academically with the applicant, Gilberto Tadeu Lima, on several economic topics and issues of common research interest - for instance, environmental constraints on macrodynamics and diffusion of clean technologies, which are issues closely related to a seminar that Professor Katzner will present at USP. As detailed in the research proposal, the applicant has already started interacting with Professor Katzner during the several short and long academic visits made by the applicant to the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Moreover, Professor Katzner will interact with the applicant and his colleague Pedro Garcia Duarte on a joint research project that the latter two have been working on, and which is intended to develop a historical and theoretical narrative on the intellectual trajectory of the economist Leonard A. Rapping, about whom no such narrative has been written yet. Leonard A. Rapping, who died in 1991 when he was 57 years old, was an economist who advised several U.S. Federal agencies and helped develop theories on the interplay of human behavior and business cycles. With Robert E. Lucas Jr., a Nobel laureate economist and his co-author, Rapping helped lay the foundation for what was called equilibrium business cycle theory. Although early in his career Rapping held a laissez-faire view of government's role in the economy, later on he grew to believe that capitalism needed regulation. Interestingly, during the last seven years of his life Rapping was a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, having interacted with Professor Katzner in different professional ways. Additionally, Professor Katzner will teach a mini-course consisting of two lectures and one seminar to graduate students in economics at USP and other research institutions in the State of São Paulo, as this mini-course and seminar will be amply advertised and open to students from these other institutions. These lectures and seminar will all be based on Prof. Katzner's research on economic theory, history of economic thought and environmental economics. Besides, Professor Katzner will be available outside these lectures and seminar to interact with graduate students and department faculty working on or interested in his areas of research interest as listed in his Curriculum Vitae. For instance, Professor Katzner will interact academically with the applicant's master student Adriano dos Reis Miranda Laureno Oliveira, whose master thesis research funded by FAPESP includes a methodological discussion on complexity theory as applied in economics. (AU)