Determinación de la estructura de costos de producción de pez “paco”

The golden age is a "mythical state of affairs not likely to obtain in any actual economy". This remark of Joan Robinson was reported at the beginning of the thesis to convey the point that this is not a thesis about equilibrium economics. However, equilibrium models were presented and discussed. So a contradiction seemed to lurk behind this work. In fact, this contradiction was only apparent, as it is precisely the tension between stability and change that lies at the heart of this work.

While the golden age reflects a state of affairs where individuals' maximizing plans over time are all mutually compatible, the notion of equilibrium growth adopted in this work refers, rather, to state of affairs where nobody wants to change his behaviour. Since such notion can accommodate a situation where the rules of behaviour are provisional in character, a potentiality for change is embedded into the model. The sense in which rules of behaviour can be said to be provisional was discussed in the thesis, and reference was made to Keynes' theory of knowledge and to the role of conventions in economic analysis. In a state of fundamental uncertainty, knowledge is acquired by argument and cannot generally be claimed to be conclusive. This means that it cannot usually be tested against realised results or against a superior principle of knowledge. However, the grounds for rational belief can change, with the result that the same proposition may become associated with a different degree of rational belief or that a higher degree may be attached to a different proposition. If behaviour is based on that knowledge, it will change as well.

So it is the inconclusive nature of the knowledge acquired by argument that puts the equilibrium associated with the models discussed here in danger of being disrupted. And this is clearly a possibility which arises from within the model, not from the modification of one of its assumptions. This means that the equilibrium which results from the constant adoption of a set of behavioural rules cannot be credited with long­ term stability.

The tension between stability and change does not result only from the immediate fact of fundamental uncertainty. Institutions, general conventions, habits, routines, all reproduce that tension. In a non-repetitive world institutional arrangements, or even ordinary ways of getting by, are by their very nature liable to be replaced. In some sense they are outdated as soon as they are in place. So they can be viewed as providing stability and order while change is being prepared. One could even say that they bridge the gap between two successive changes.

A model of growth which incorporates such institutions, conventions, conventional judgements, etc., is therefore a model of growth whose equilibrium cannot be said to be steady in the ontological sense. Such an equilibrium could be compatible with growing unemployment, with an other-than-normal degree of capacity utilisation, with an exogenous distribution of income, or with a number of other non-optimal behaviours. The very nature of this equilibrium, however, will prepare the ground for its replacement. Nothing could be farther from the golden age.

In order to make sense of each individual growth regime, the relevant institutional or conventional arrangements must be specified. In this work, even if a list of growth regimes was presented, attention was focused on a particular one, where the non- optimal behaviour refers to the use of capacity. It was argued that it is the immediate fact of fundamental uncertainty, and the related question of decision-making, that is relevant for the specification of the conventional arrangement underlying this growth regime. This is not to deny, however, that the fact of fundamental uncertainty is relevant in the specification of the arrangements underlying the other growth regimes. It only means that in the capacity utilisation model there is a more obvious problem of

decision-making than in the other cases. So what needs to be specified here is a conventional judgement, that is, how individuals acquire knowledge of the propositions relevant to the making of their decisions.

When the theory of economic growth is reconstructed along these lines, i.e. as a general model with different 'closures’ each of which is associated with a particular institutional arrangement, one further question must not be overlooked. The question is whether the economic theorist is granted a power of knowledge different from that of the representative individual agent, whose behaviour is studied in the economic model. This question is particularly compelling with respect to an approach where the focus is on non-equilibrium situations. Since the process of growth is presented as a succession of growth regimes, without any necessary convergence to a golden age, should we expect agents to carry on representing the economy as ultimately tending to that harmonious state of affairs? Or should we expect them to turn the current growth regime into their favourite representation of the process of economic growth?

These problems are undoubtedly difficult to solve. One should recognize that sometimes a different power of knowledge between the economic theorist and the representative agent is realistic, sometimes it is not. The equilibrium studied in the final chapter, where medium-term profits are turned into a component of the long-term profitability of investment, is an example of how agents can turn a particular regime of growth into the best representation of the process of economic growth, and act accordingly.