Mardi | 2015-06-23
Sully 5, 16h-17h20

Francesco SERGI

The purpose of this contribution to epistemology and history of recent macroeconomics is to construct a clear understanding about econometric methods and problems in New Classical macroeconomics. Most historical work focused on theoretical or policy implication aspects of this research program, set in motion by Robert Lucas in the early seventies. To the opposite, the empirical and econometric works of New Classical macroeconomics had received little attention.We focus especially on the contributions gathered in Rational Expectations and Econometric Practice, edited in 1981 by Lucas and Thomas Sargent. The main claim of our article is that the publishing of this book must be regarded as a turn in macroeconometric modeling, closely related to Lucas’s conception of models.The analysis of the New Classical macroeconometrics through the Lucas methodology allow us to propose an original historical account of the methods presented in Rational Expectations and Econometric Practice, but also of the problems that flawed this approach.