Publisher:
Duke University, Center for the History of Political Economy (CHOPE), Durham, NC
Abstract:
This paper discusses the role played by NY Fed economist Robert Roosa and Paul Samuelson in the emergence of the literature on credit rationing at the beginning of the 1950s. I argue that, contrary to the story one can find in the technical surveys, an intermediate step between Roosa and the models typical of the literature on credit rationing post-1960 took place and was of significant importance in reframing a practitioner's argument into something that could be more easily tackled by economists. Samuelson played a key role in this process and brought out the importance of credit rationing as a phenomenon that should be explained as the outcome of rational agents' behavior.