Relaxation oscillations in the history of business cycles from 1928 to 1941

To date no satisfactory reason has been given to explain why no economist succeeded in proposing a business cycle model with nonlinear oscillations before Richard Goodwin. This article investigates the attempts of economists to model endogenous macrodynamic fluctuations with relaxation oscillations...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The European journal of the history of economic thought 2024-05, Vol.31 (3), p.400-427
Main Authors: Ginoux, Jean-Marc, Jovanovic, Franck
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
B22 history of economic thought since 1925: Macroeconomics
B23 history of economic thought since 1925: Econometrics
B31 history of economic thought: Individuals
Business cycles
Economists
Endogenous
jan tinbergen
ludwig hamburger
nonlinear macrodynamics
philippe Le corbeiller
quantitative and mathematical studies
ragnar frisch
Relaxation
relaxation oscillations
richard goodwin
self-maintained oscillations
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Summary:To date no satisfactory reason has been given to explain why no economist succeeded in proposing a business cycle model with nonlinear oscillations before Richard Goodwin. This article investigates the attempts of economists to model endogenous macrodynamic fluctuations with relaxation oscillations before 1941. It clarifies a common error between self-maintained oscillations and relaxation oscillations. It demonstrates that Van der Pol's work opened three research programs in economics: relaxation oscillations, self-maintained oscillations, and damped oscillations maintained by exogenous and erratic impulses. It establishes that in 1941 Yves Rocard demonstrated that relaxation oscillations for modelling business cycles was a dead end.
ISSN:0967-2567
1469-5936
DOI:10.1080/09672567.2023.2292799