Séminaire – Approches historiques, philosophiques et anthropologiques des nombres, de la mesure et de la mesurabilité

La mesure en économie – « Quantification et modèles économique »
Présentations : Quentin Dufour (ENS) et Verena Halsmayer (University of Lucerne)

• Verena Halsmayer – University of Lucerne
  Merely a model : Solow’s growth model as a historical artifact
  Résumé :
  In my presentation I will talk about a book manuscript, in which I want to find out what made the economist Robert Solow’s model of economic growth (1956) a “model” and what that meant. I do so from a historian’s perspective : attending to other forms of economic knowledge and their settings between the 1930s and 1960s helps me to investigate the model’s specific material and medial characteristics. At the same time, this approach allows me to tell episodes from the history of growth as an economists’ problem. Several episodes from the life of what soon came to be called “the Solow model” investigate the interplay between model form, economists’ reasoning about growth and development, measurement techniques, and practices of intervention in specific circumstances. As did many other economic modelers, Solow frequently emphasized that it was merely a model—a stylized construct, heuristic device, a tool for investigation. And yet, it was precisely such framing that allowed it to entertain a host of engagements and unfold its suggestive power. Ultimately, it turned into a model of what it meant to think like an economist.
• Quentin Dufour – Centre Maurice Halbwach
  Producing a state of the economy. Data transformations and the representation of the economy
  Résumé :
  National accounts are based on two major tables – the Overall Economic Table (OEE) and the Input-Output Table (IOT). Together, they are generally considered as the main representations of the national economy. However, to tell something about the state of a country’s economy for a month or a year, they both need to be filled-in with data. This communication focuses on the measurement practices that turn empty tables into full tables, in the case of the French Statistical Institute. At the crossroads of the sociology of quantification and the sociology of science, we question the kind of data and the kind of work that needs to be achieved on them to produce a state of the economy. To fill-in their tables, French statisticians can lean on vast amounts of preexisting economic data. Nonetheless, once collected, they are not directly integrated into the tables. This communication shows that, to produce a state of the economy, workers cannot keep data as they are. Rather, they massively transform them to achieve a consistent picture of the economy for the quarter or the year. We identify four transformation processes that allow data to be compatible with the accounting tables : economization, temporalization, globalization, and stabilization. The analysis is based on a nine-month ethnographic survey within the National Accounts Department inside the French Statistical institute

Lieu : salle 646A-Mondrian