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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 October 2022
Economists began using models between the First and Second World Wars. The first econometric model of the United States was produced by Jan Tinbergen at the League of Nations. Modeling was a methodological solution to the political problems of the interwar period. International norms of cooperation and governance had to be reconciled with new demands for national autonomy in economic affairs, with a new understanding of the nation-state's capacity to make and remake the economy. Models possessed a composite, ambiguous character that appealed to both nationalist and internationalist sympathies. Models combined fact and theory, the particular and the general, the local and the global. The practice of modeling contrasted with and largely displaced an older, universalizing discourse of scientific law, predominant in the nineteenth century. Modeling reflected the nation-state's ascendance as a legitimate arbiter of economic policy, situated uneasily within a regime of international norms and institutions.
1 Jan Tinbergen, Statistical Testing of Business-Cycle Theories, 2 vols. (Geneva, 1939).
2 Mary S. Morgan, The World in the Model: How Economists Work and Think (Cambridge, 2012), 380–93.
3 Tinbergen, J., “Henry Schultzes ökonometrische Untersuchungen,” Journal of Unified Science (Erkenntnis) 8 (1939), 177–81Google Scholar, at 181.
4 League of Nations, “Sixth Meeting. Held on Tuesday, September 23rd, at 9:30 a.m.,” League of Nations Official Journal, Special Supplement 86 (1930), 49–60, at 55.
5 Alfred Marshall, The Present Position of Economics: An Inaugural Lecture Given in the Senate House at Cambridge, 24 February, 1885 (London, 1885), 38.
6 Grimmer-Solem, Erik and Romani, Roberto, “In Search of Full Empirical Reality: Historical Political Economy, 1870–1900,” European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 6/3 (1999), 333–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 343–5; Emma Rothschild, “Political Economy,” in Gareth Stedman Jones and Gregory Claeys, eds., The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Political Thought (Cambridge, 2011), 748–79.
7 Dungy, Madeleine Lynch, “Writing Multilateral Trade Rules in the League of Nations,” Contemporary European History 30/1 (2021), 60–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 68. See also Pinchis, Mona, “The Ancestry of ‘Equitable Treatment’ in Trade: Lessons from the League of Nations during the Inter-war Period,” Journal of World Investment and Trade 15/1–2 (2014), 13–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 Ludwig von Mises, Epistemological Problems of Economics, trans. George Reisman, 3rd edn (Auburn, AL, 2003), lxxvii.
9 Lionel Robbins, An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science, 2nd edn (London, 1935), 81.
10 Lionel Robbins, Economic Planning and International Order (London, 1937).
11 Mark M. Mazower, No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations (Princeton, 2009); Susan Pedersen, The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (Oxford, 2015); Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism (Cambridge, MA, 2018).
12 Barry Eichengreen, Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1919–1939 (Oxford, 1996), 6–10; Jamie Martin, The Meddlers: Sovereignty, Empire, and the Birth of Global Economic Governance (Cambridge, MA, 2022), 7–8; J. Adam Tooze, The Deluge: The Great War, America, and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916–1931 (New York, 2014), 174.
13 Patricia Clavin, Securing the World Economy: The Reinvention of the League of Nations, 1920–1946 (Oxford, 2013); de Marchi, Neil, “League of Nations Economists and the Ideal of Peaceful Change in the Decade of the ’Thirties,” History of Political Economy 23, suppl. (1991), 143–78Google Scholar.
14 Mark Mazower, Governing the World: The History of an Idea, 1815 to the Present (New York, 2013).
15 Martin, Meddlers, 13–21.
16 Glenda Sluga, Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism (Philadelphia, 2013), 68.
17 Erwin Dekker, Jan Tinbergen (1903–1994) and the Rise of Economic Expertise (Cambridge, 2021), 44–52.
18 Ibid., 417–18.
19 Ibid., 53–57.
20 William Deringer, Calculated Values: Finance, Politics, and the Quantitative Age (Cambridge, MA, 2018); Judy L. Klein, Statistical Visions in Time: A History of Time Series Analysis, 1662–1938 (Cambridge, 1997).
21 Philip Mirowski, More Heat than Light: Economics as Social Physics, Physics as Nature's Economics (Cambridge, 1989).
22 Paul Ehrenfest and Tatiana Ehrenfest, The Conceptual Foundations of the Statistical Approach in Mechanics, trans. Michael J. Moravcsik (New York, 1990).
23 Marcel Boumans, How Economists Model the World into Numbers (London, 2005), chap. 2.
24 Tinbergen, J., “Bestimmung und Deutung von Angebotskurven: Ein Beispiel,” Zeitschrift für Nationalökonomie 1/5 (1930), 669–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
25 Tinbergen, J., “Ein Schiffbauzyklus?,” Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 34 (1931), 152–64Google Scholar.
26 Dekker, Jan Tinbergen, 148.
27 Morgan, World in the Model, 8–12; Duo Qin, The Formation of Econometrics: A Historical Perspective (Oxford, 1997), 38.
28 Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics, 8th edn (Houndmills, 2013).
29 E. Roy Weintraub, How Economics Became a Mathematical Science (Durham, NC, 2002), 21–5.
30 Chao, Hsiang-Ke and Maas, Harro, “Engines of Discovery: Jevons and Marshall on the Methods of Graphs and Diagrams,” Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology 35 (2017), 35–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
31 On the development of econometrics out of interwar business cycle studies see Alain Desrosières, The Politics of Large Numbers: A History of Statistical Reasoning (Cambridge, MA, 1998); R. J. Epstein, A History of Econometrics (Amsterdam, 1987); Mary S. Morgan, The History of Econometric Ideas (Cambridge, 1990). On the business cycle and the temporal order of capitalism see Lenel, Laetitia, “Mapping the Future: Business Forecasting and the Dynamics of Capitalism in the Interwar Period,” Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte/Economic History Yearbook 59/2 (2018), 377–413CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jamie Martin, “Time and the Economics of the Business Cycle in Modern Capitalism,” in Dan Edelstein, Stefanos Geroulanos, and Natasha Wheatley, eds., Power and Time: Temporalities in Conflict and the Making of History (Chicago, 2020), 317–34.
32 Guy Alchon, The Invisible Hand of Planning: Capitalism, Social Science, and the State in the 1920s (Princeton, 2014); Michael A. Bernstein, A Perilous Progress: Economists and Public Purpose in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton, 2014); Timothy Edward Shenk, “Inventing the American Economy” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Columbia University, 2016).
33 Morgenstern, Oskar, “Aufgaben und Grenzen der Institute für Konjunkturforschung,” Schriften des Vereins für Sozialpolitik 173/2 (1928), 339–53Google Scholar.
34 Walter Friedman, Fortune Tellers: The Story of America's First Economic Forecasters (Princeton, 2013); Jamie L. Pietruska, Looking Forward: Prediction and Uncertainty in Modern America (Chicago, 2017), 156–66.
35 Craver, Earlene, “Patronage and the Directions of Research in Economics: The Rockefeller Foundation in Europe, 1924–1938,” Minerva 24/2/3 (1986), 205–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On business cycle research in Scandinavia see Andvig, Jens Christopher, “Ragnar Frisch and Business Cycle Research During the Interwar Years,” History of Political Economy 13/4 (1981), 695–725CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Earlene Craver, “Gösta Bagge, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Empirical Social Science Research in Sweden, 1924–1940,” in Lars Jonung, ed., The Stockholm School of Economics Revisited (Cambridge, 1991), 79–100; Francisco Louçã, The Years of High Econometrics: A Short History of the Generation That Reinvented Economics (London, 2012). For Germany see Roman Köster, Die Wissenschaft der Aussenseiter: Die Krise der Nationalökonomie in der Weimarer Republik (Göttingen, 2011); Gunnar Take, “‘One of the Bright Spots in German Economics’: Die Förderung des Kieler Instituts für Weltwirtschaft durch die Rockefeller Foundation, 1925–1950,” Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte/Economic History Yearbook 59/1 (2018), 251–328; J. Adam Tooze, Statistics and the German State, 1900–1945: The Making of Modern Economic Knowledge (Cambridge, 2001). For France see Philippe Le Gall, A History of Econometrics in France: From Nature to Models (London, 2007). For England see Robert A. Cord, “The London and Cambridge Economic Service: History and Contributions,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 41/1 (2017), 307–26. For studies of the business cycle as a global phenomenon see Martin Bemmann, “Weltwirtschaftsstatistik: Internationale Wirtschaftsstatistik und die Geschichte der Globalisierung, 1850–1950” (unpublished habilitation, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, 2020), 558–79.
36 Gottfried Haberler, Prosperity and Depression: A Theoretical Analysis of Cyclical Movements (Cambridge, MA, 1958). Haberler's analysis, discussed subsequently, remains a valuable survey of business cycle theory at the moment it became modern macroeconomics.
37 Verbatim report, 10:30 am, 7 July 1939, 10A/38681/32649, R.4455: 37–40. All references are to the League of Nations Archives, United Nations Office at Geneva, Palais des Nations, 1211 Geneva.
38 Lionel Robbins, The Great Depression (London, 1934).
39 Benny Carlson and Lars Jonung, “Ohlin on the Great Depression: Ten Newspaper Articles 1929–1935,” Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology 32 (2014), 299–348; A. C. Pigou, Industrial Fluctuations, 2nd edn (London, 1929), 314–77; Ernst Wagemann, Economic Rhythm: A Theory of Business Cycles, trans. D. H. Blelloch (New York, 1930), 242–48.
40 William J. Barber, From New Era to New Deal: Herbert Hoover, the Economists, and American Economic Policy, 1921–1933 (Cambridge, 1985).
41 R. G. Hawtrey, Good and Bad Trade: An Inquiry into the Causes of Trade Fluctuations (London, 1913), 256–61.
42 Irving Fisher, The Purchasing Power of Money: Its Determination and Relation to Credit, Interest and Crises (New York, 1911). See also Thomas A. Stapleford, The Cost of Living in America: A Political History of Economic Statistics, 1880–2000 (Cambridge, 2009), 71–4.
43 Jan R. Magnus and Mary S. Morgan, “The ET Interview: Professor J. Tinbergen,” Econometric Theory 3/1 (1987), 122.
44 J. Tinbergen, “Der Einfluß der Kaufkraftregulierung auf den Konjunkturverlauf,” Zeitschrift für Nationalökonomie 5 (1934), 289–319.
45 David E. W. Laidler, Fabricating the Keynesian Revolution: Studies of the Inter-war Literature on Money, the Cycle, and Unemployment (Cambridge, 1999).
46 Mark Blaug, “Second Thoughts on the Keynesian Revolution,” History of Political Economy 23/2 (1991), 171–92, at 178.
47 Friedrich A. von Hayek, Business Cycles: Part I, ed. Hansjörg Klausinger, in The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, ed. Bruce Caldwell, vol. 7 (London, 2013), 67–74; Wesley C. Mitchell, Business Cycles: The Problem and Its Setting (New York, 1927), 55–60; Joseph A. Schumpeter, Business Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical, and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Process (New York, 1939), 30–33.
48 Adolf Löwe, “Wie ist Konjunkturtheorie überhaupt möglich?”, Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 24 (1926), 165–97, at 166.
49 Chao and Maas, “Engines of Discovery,” 36–8; Desrosières, The Politics of Large Numbers, 279–81; Morgan, History of Econometric Ideas, 2–4.
50 Oskar Morgenstern, “Qualitative und quantitative Forschung,” Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft 85/1 (1928), 54–88, at 77–8, original emphasis.
51 Oskar Morgenstern, “International vergleichende Konjunkturforschung,” Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft 83 (1927), 261–90.
52 Don Patinkin, “Keynes and Econometrics: On the Interaction between the Macroeconomic Revolutions of the Interwar Period,” Econometrica 44/6 (1976), 1091–1123.
53 Louçã, Years, Ch. 11.
54 Magnus and Morgan, “The ET Interview,” 118–19.
55 J. Tinbergen, “Quantitative Fragen der Konjunkturpolitik,” Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 42 (1935), 366–99, at 379.
56 Jan Tinbergen, An Econometric Approach to Business Cycle Problems (Paris, 1937), 71.
57 Adrienne van den Bogaard, Configuring the Economy: The Emergence of a Modelling Practice in the Netherlands, 1920–1955 (Amsterdam, 1999), 43–4.
58 Dekker, Jan Tinbergen, 121.
59 Ibid., 37.
60 Ibid., 127–8.
61 Ibid., 148.
62 Tinbergen, An Econometric Approach to Business Cycle Problems, 53.
63 Susan Pedersen, “Back to the League of Nations,” American Historical Review 112/4 (2007), 1091–1117.
64 Heidi J. S. Tworek, “Communicable Disease: Information, Health, and Globalization in the Interwar Period,” American Historical Review 124/3 (2019), 813–42. For the League's relation to technologies of media and communication see Carolyn N. Biltoft, A Violent Peace: Media, Truth, and Power at the League of Nations (Chicago, 2021).
65 Mazower, Governing the World, Ch. 5.
66 Zara Steiner, The Lights That Failed: European International History, 1919–1933 (Oxford, 2005), 631.
67 Nathan Marcus, Austrian Reconstruction and the Collapse of Global Finance, 1921–1931 (Cambridge, MA, 2018), 144–6. Marcus argues, however, that Austrian politicians often succeeded in subverting the League's authority, evading international surveillance, and retaining a degree of autonomy over their country's economic affairs.
68 Patricia Clavin, Securing the World Economy: The Reinvention of the League of Nations, 1920–1946 (Oxford, 2013), 25–33; Martin, Meddlers, 76–91; Louis W. Pauly, Who Elected the Bankers? Surveillance and Control in the World Economy (Ithaca, 1997), 52–6.
69 Steiner, The Lights That Failed, 612.
70 Patricia Clavin and Jens-Wilhelm Wessels, “Transnationalism and the League of Nations: Understanding the Work of Its Economic and Financial Organisation,” Contemporary European History 14/4 (2005), 465–92.
71 Martin, Meddlers, 25.
72 Nicholas Mulder, The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War (New Haven, 2022).
73 Pauly, Who Elected the Bankers?, 51–2.
74 Martin Bemmann, “Comparing Economic Activities on a Global Level in the 1920s and 1930s: Motives and Consequences,” in Willibald Steinmetz, ed., The Force of Comparison: A New Perspective on Modern European History and the Contemporary World (New York, 2019).
75 Pauly, Who Elected the Bankers?, 59.
76 Alexander Loveday, Britain and World Trade: Quo Vadimus and Other Economic Essays (London, 1931), xv.
77 Clavin, Securing the World Economy, 2013, 51–71.
78 League of Nations, The Course and Phases of the World Economic Depression (Geneva, 1931), 96–7, 227.
79 Ingvar Svennilson, Growth and Stagnation in the European Economy (Geneva, 1954), 31; Robert Salais, “Why Was Unemployment So Low in France during the 1930s?”, in Barry J. Eichengreen and T. J. Hatton, eds., Interwar Unemployment in International Perspective (Dordrecht, 1988), 247–88. Salais warns that unemployment figures for interwar France might understate the magnitude of the depression, but the fact that the crisis was less severe there than elsewhere in Europe is not in question. An observation recorded in the League's archives confirms this retrospective assessment. Minutes, 3:30 pm, 2 March 1931, 10D/26719/23630, R.2890: 8–9.
80 Loveday, Britain and World Trade, 163.
81 Aditya Balasubramanian and Srinath Raghavan, “Present at the Creation: India, the Global Economy, and the Bretton Woods Conference,” Journal of World History 29/1 (2018), 65–94, at 73–9.
82 Mark Metzler, Lever of Empire: The International Gold Standard and the Crisis of Liberalism in Prewar Japan (Berkeley, 2006), 227–9.
83 League of Nations, “Twenty-First Plenary Meeting: Thursday, October 2nd, 1930, at 10 a.m.,” League of Nations Official Journal, Special Supplement 84 (1930), 188–201, at 190.
84 Alexander Loveday, letter to Jacobsson, 1 Oct. 1930, P.141.
85 Alexander Loveday, Reflections on International Administration (Oxford, 1956), xiii.
86 Provisional minutes, 3:30 pm, 3, 12, 2 July 1931, 10D/23630/31600, R.2891.
87 Provisional minutes, 11 am, 2 July 1931, 10D/31600/23630, R.2891: 7.
88 Loveday, Britain and World Trade, viii.
89 Barry Eichengreen and Peter Temin, “The Gold Standard and the Great Depression,” Contemporary European History 9/2 (2000), 183–207.
90 Loveday, Britain and World Trade, 146.
91 Laidler, Fabricating the Keynesian Revolution, 331–2; Marglin, Raising Keynes: A Twenty-First Century General Theory (Cambridge, MA, 2021), 56–60.
92 Ludwig von Mises, The Theory of Money and Credit, trans. J. E. Batson (Auburn, AL, 2009), 425.
93 Clavin, Securing the World Economy, 4; Pauly, Who Elected the Bankers?, Ch. 4. An opposing view is that of A. M. Endres and Grant A. Fleming, International Organizations and the Analysis of Economic Policy, 1919–1950 (Cambridge, 2002).
94 Loveday, Alexander, “The League of Nations and Business Cycle Research,” Review of Economics and Statistics 18/4 (1936), 157–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 160.
95 “Draft Report,” n.d., 10D/29727/23630, R.2891: 7.
96 Dennis H. Robertson, letter to Alexander Loveday, 17 Dec. 1936, P.144.
97 Craver, “Patronage,” 213.
98 On Haberler see Mauro Boianovsky and Hans-Michael Trautwein, “Haberler, the League of Nations, and the Quest for Consensus in Business Cycle Theory in the 1930s,” History of Political Economy 38/1 (2006), 45–89; Slobodian, Globalists, 71–3.
99 Haberler, Prosperity and Depression, 5.
100 Ibid., 275–6.
101 John Maynard Keynes, letter to Alfred Cowles, 23 July 1945, quoted by Patinkin, “Keynes and Econometrics,” 1096.
102 Lionel Robbins, letter to Alexander Loveday, 22 April 1936, P.144.
103 Alexander Loveday, “Study of the Recurrence of Economic Cycles (Rockefeller Grant),” Sept. 16, 1936, 10B/25630/12653, R.4540.
104 Dorothy P. Etlinger, letter to Alexander Loveday, 23 Sept. 1939, P.146.
105 Alexander Loveday, minute, 14 June 1935, 10B/25630/12653, R.4540. Dorothy P. Etlinger, letter to Tjalling Koopmans, 6 Dec. 1938, 10B/35024/12653, R.4540.
106 “Annexes,” League of Nations Official Journal 15/6 (1934), 524–634, at 524.
107 “Staff List of the Secretariat,” League of Nations Official Journal 18/10 (1937), 789–824, at 803–4.
108 Robbins, Essay.
109 Mises, Epistemological Problems of Economics, 127–9.
110 John Maynard Keynes, The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, ed. Elizabeth S. Johnson and D. E. Moggridge, vol. 14 (London, 1971), 294, 299.
111 Alexander Loveday, handwritten minute to Ragnar Nurkse and James Meade, n.d., 10B/33994/12653, R.4540.
112 Magnus and Morgan, “The ET Interview,” 130.
113 Keynes, Collected Writings, 297, 300.
114 Ibid., 296.
115 Schumpeter, Business Cycles, 31.
116 Tinbergen, “Quantitative Fragen der Konjunkturpolitik,” 380.
117 Tinbergen, Statistical Testing of Business-Cycle Theories, 2: 123, 140, 151, 168–71.
118 Dennis H. Robertson, letter to Alexander Loveday, 14 June 1939, 10B/33994/12653, R.4540.
119 Keynes, Collected Writings, 286.
120 Ibid., 292.
121 Tinbergen, An Econometric Approach to Business Cycle Problems, 9.
122 Tinbergen, Statistical Testing of Business-Cycle Theories, 1: 30–2.
123 David F. Hendry and Mary S. Morgan, “A Re-analysis of Confluence Analysis,” Oxford Economic Papers 41/1 (1989), 35–52.
124 Epstein, A History of Econometrics, 39–40.
125 Ragnar Frisch, “Autonomy of Economic Relations,” in David F. Hendry and Mary S. Morgan, eds., The Foundations of Econometric Analysis (Cambridge, 1995), 407–19.
126 Haavelmo, Trygve, “The Probability Approach in Econometrics,” Econometrica 12, suppl. (1944), 27–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
127 Tinbergen, draft of Ch. 7, “Period 1932–1937,” n.d., 10B/35838/12653, R.4540.
128 Verbatim report, 8 Dec. 1938, 10A/36596/32649, R.4454: 350.
129 Verbatim reports, 3:30 pm, 5 Dec. 1938, 10A/36596/32649, R.4454: 6, 21; 3:30 pm, 6 Dec. 1938: 7.
130 Tjalling Koopmans, minute to Alexander Loveday, 10 Dec. 1938; and Loveday, minute to Koopmans, 15 Dec. 1938, 10A/33303/32649, R. 4453.
131 Verbatim report, 10:30 am, 6 Dec. 1938: 21.
132 Keynes, Collected Writings, 285.
133 Alexander Loveday, letter to Dennis H. Robertson, 20 April 1938, P.145.
134 Ragnar Frisch, “Autonomy of Economic Relations,” in David F. Hendry and Mary S. Morgan, eds., The Foundations of Econometric Analysis (Cambridge, 1995), 407–19, at 417, added emphasis. Frisch's memorandum was discussed at a conference on Tinbergen's work convened by the League in July 1938. A theme of the discussion was the meaning of his constants. Jacques J. Polak, “Meeting at Cambridge,” 2 Sept. 1938, 10B/33815/12653, R.4540. The Swedish econometrician Johan Åkerman likewise wrote that causation was different in natural and social phenomena, and that Tinbergen lacked “an explanation of the deeper causes.” Johan Åkerman, letter to Jan Tinbergen, 1 Aug. 1938, 10B/33994/12653, R.4540; “Remarks by Dr. J. Åkerman on the Interim Report on Statistical Business-Cycle Research,” 26 Nov. 1937, 10B/26666/12653, R.4540.
135 Tjalling Koopmans, minute to Alexander Loveday, 20 June 1939, 10B/33994/12653, R.4540.
136 Alexander Loveday, minute to Sean Lester, 11 Jan. 1938, P.144.
137 League of Nations, Economic Stability in the Post-war World: The Conditions of Prosperity after the Transition from War to Peace (Geneva, 1945), 17–18.
138 Ibid., 19–20.
139 Mitchell, Timothy, “Fixing the Economy,” Cultural Studies 12/1 (1998), 82–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 87–8. See also Shenk, “Inventing the American Economy,” 219–25.
140 Tinbergen, “Quantitative Fragen der Konjunkturpolitik,” 370.
141 Timothy Mitchell, “Economists and the Economy in the Twentieth Century,” in George Steinmetz, ed., The Politics of Method in the Human Sciences: Positivism and Its Epistemological Others (Durham, NC, 2005), 126–41, at 128, 132.
142 Ronald G. Bodkin, Lawrence Robert Klein, and Kanta Marwah, A History of Macroeconometric Model-Building (Aldershot, 1991); Jacob Marschak and Oskar Lange, “Mr Keynes on the Statistical Verification of Business Cycle Theories,” in Hendry and Morgan, Foundations of Econometric Analysis, 390–98.
143 Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (Indianapolis, 2007), 320.
144 Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-politics, Modernity (Berkeley, 2002); Daniel Speich Chassé, Die Erfindung des Bruttosozialprodukts: Globale Ungleichheit in der Wissensgeschichte der Ökonomie (Göttingen, 2013); J. Adam Tooze, “Imagining National Economies: National and International Economic Statistics, 1900–1950,” in Geoffrey Cubitt, ed., Imagining Nations (Manchester, 1998), 212–28.
145 Slobodian, Globalists, 88–9.
146 Martin, Meddlers, 212–13.
147 Haavelmo, “The Probability Approach in Econometrics,” 12.
148 James Woodward, Making Things Happen: A Theory of Causal Explanation (Oxford, 2004).
149 Nancy Cartwright, The Dappled World (Cambridge, 1999), 49–74.
150 Geoffrey Hawthorn, Plausible Worlds: Possibility and Understanding in History and the Social Sciences (Cambridge, 1991).
151 Morgan, World in the Model, 217–55.
152 Angela Potochnik, Idealization and the Aims of Science (Chicago, 2017).
153 Woodward, Making Things Happen, 191–4.
154 Jan Tinbergen, letter to Gottfried Haberler, 20 July 1936, 10B/12653/12653, R.4539.
155 Frisch, “Autonomy of Economic Relations,” 417, original emphasis.
156 Marcel Boumans, “Lucas and Artificial Worlds,” History of Political Economy 29, suppl. (1997), 63–90.
