soviet mathematical economists during the brezhnev era: disciplinary status and epistemic culture...
TRANSCRIPT
Soviet Mathematical Economists during the Brezhnev Era: Disciplinary Status
and Epistemic Culture
Ivan Boldyrev, Humboldt University (Berlin) and National Research University – Higher School of
Economics (Moscow)[email protected]
Olessia Kirtchik, National Research University – Higher School of Economics (Moscow)
Motivation• Part of the larger project – Research Group Social
studies of economic knowledge (http://igiti.hse.ru/socres/)
• The first object of inquiry – general equilibrium theory in a comparative perspective
• Subfield of mathematical economics – more comprehensive term covering heterogeneous research domains and practices
• Ambiguous status: between technicalities of applied math and ideologically dubious refuge of neoclassicism
Questions• Tentative socio-historical analysis• Institutionalization• Epistemic culture (Knorr Cetina 1991)• Disciplinary identity (Lamont&
Molnar 2002)• Comparison East-West
Institutions
• Strong tension within a discipline (US: institutionalists and Chicago school, USSR: Marxist political economy)
• Delay in institutionalization in the USSR (CEMI founded in 1963; mathematical methods to develop after 1953)
• Unlike US, math econ remained a minor group, with few institutional sites and only limited influence in universities
• Like US, math econ was a part of larger planning and cybernetics movement inspired by a Cold war context
Knowledge and Epistemic Culture
• Very few developments in economic theorizing, why?
• Conjecture: polarization and lack of identity• Math econ reduced to applied math; political
economy stayed away from the data; applied economists did not dare theoretical generalizations
• Dorfman 1976: technocratic modeling, emphasis on the supply side; balance, optimization.
Anti-Semitism as an important ‘omitted variable’
• Weintraub 2012: academic Anti-Semitism in the US universities explaining the rise of MIT
• Soviet case: Anti-Semitism at the math department of Moscow University, special unsolvable problems etc. (Frenkel 2012)
• A lot of mathematicians coming into math econ, with a lot of new jobs
• The story of one ‘Polterovich’ and two ‘Ivanovs’
Conclusion: parallels and contrasts
• Both cases reveal internal tensions within economics profession, state funding (role of the military), anti-Semitism
• However: Soviet math econ developed with a delay for ideological reasons (no theoretical backwardness! Cf. the story of Kantorovich)
• Soviet math econ lacked autonomous economic (theoretical) discourse beyond Marxist political economy and applied math/operations research
Thank you!