Peddling Macroeconometric Modeling and Quantitative Policy Analysis: The Early Years of the SSRC’s Committee on Economic Stability, 1959-1963

Abstract

Using the Social Science Research Council’s records, we discuss the two projects that the Committee on Economic Stability carried out during its first three years of existence: (i) the construction of a macroeconometric model (1960-1963) and (ii) the organization of a conference on quantitative policy analysis (1963). In line with the central theme of this special issue, we focus on the effect of the Committee’s activities on public economic discourse and argue that, while the Committee did not participate directly in the policy debate, it did purposefully contribute to the growing importance of macroeconometric models in policy analysis. Thus, with its activities, the Committee helped usher in an age of quantified and model- based economic discourse that was not, however, exclusively technical but that recognized both the importance of the political character of the policy-making process and the limits of the economists’ toolkit.

Keywords

• modeling
• Social Science Research Council (SSRC)
• quantification
• macroeconometrics