Interlude: Harrod on Method

In August 1938, Harrod organized and chaired the meeting of the Economic section of the British Association, and in the position of President delivered a long speech on the ’scope and Method of Economics’ (later published as Harrod 1938a). Harrod first thought of methodology as a subject for his presidential address in January 1938, when he wrote to Keynes saying that he was ‘thinking of doing a heavy methodological piece about statics & dynamics, the scope of pure theory, the place of induction etc’ (Harrod to Keynes, 24 Jan. 1938). Keynes tried to dissuade him from delivering an address too ’serious and academic for such an occasion’ (Keynes to Harrod, 26 Jan. 1938). Harrod, however, felt ‘a strong inner urge to say something’ on method (Harrod 1938a, p. 384), and as a result of this choice ‘anything [he] had to say about recent monetary literature has been squeezed out by deduction, induction etc. and whether the utilities of two people can be compared!’ (Harrod to Robertson, 5 July 1938).1