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After the Great Financial Crisis, economic theory was fiercely criticized from both outside and inside the discipline for being incapable of explaining a crisis of such magnitude. Slowly but persistently, new strands of economic thought are developing, to replace the old-fashioned neoclassical economic theory, which have a common characteristic: they are better suited to help understand the real-world economy. This book explores the key tenets and applications of these. This book opens with an explanation of the “real world” approach to economics in which theoretical models resemble real-world situations, realistic assumptions are made, and factors such as uncertainty, coordination problems, and bounded rationality are incorporated. Additionally, this book explores the ramifications of considering the economy as both a dynamic system - with a past, present, and future - and a complex one. These theoretical precepts of the real-world economy are then applied to some of the most pressing economic issues facing the world today including ecological sustainability, the rise of corporate power, the growing dominance of the financial world, and rising unemployment, poverty, and inequality. In each case, this book reveals the insights of the shortcomings of the neoclassical approach which fails to illuminate the complexities behind each issue. It is demonstrated that, by contrast, adopting an approach grounded in the real world has the power to produce policy proposals to help tackle these problems. This book is essential reading for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the economy, including readers from economics and across the social sciences.

Economic Methodology, History and Pluralism: Expanding Economic Thought to Meet Contemporary Challenges pays tribute to Emeritus Professor Sheila Dow (University of Stirling, Scotland). This volume focusses on the contributions of Dow to economic methodology, pluralism and the history of economic thought. These explorations serve to underpin her ideas and theories on macroeconomics, banking and money.Bringing together an impressive panel of contributors, the chapters in this work examine Dow's writings on structured pluralism and schools of thought, meanings of open and closed systems, reflections on the relationship between economics and other sciences (both social and natural), the methodology of behavioural economics, as well as the political economy of the Scottish school of thought. The book challenges the foundations of the mainstream economics paradigm in a novel and holistic manner, seeking to advance thinking across Dow's favoured discipline. The essays in this collection provide thought-provoking reading for advanced students and scholars of economic methodology, the history of economic thought, heterodox economics and political economy. The book will also be valued by the economics profession at large, as it contains important elements and ideas concerning ethics, methodology and tolerance within economics as a discipline and as a profession.

If evolutionary economics is to compete with neoclassical economics as a general-purpose economic theory, it needs to incorporate new aspects of socioeconomic reality, such as institutions of all types, including technical, scientific, and political. Furthermore, evolutionary economics needs to be able to provide policy implications at least as interesting as those of neoclassical economics. Thus, as this book argues, evolutionary economics must become evolutionary political economy. Innovation plays a central role in the book, but not in the sense of providing a technologically determinist interpretation. Rather, the book argues that innovations do not emerge in isolation from other components of socioeconomic systems but coevolve with institutions, infrastructures and organizational forms. This concept of coevolution is absolutely central in the book and provides a link with theories of complexity. In addition to providing an epistemological basis for evolutionary economics, the link with complexity and coevolution offers the connection with evolutionary political economy. Innovations and technologies do not emerge and develop in an institutional vacuum, but interact with existing institutions and reshape them, in addition to inducing the formation of new institutions. In this process, technologies and institutions reinforce each other providing a potential mechanism to transform socioeconomic systems. The book also explores the policy implications of these innovative societies, where wealth is created but unequally distributed. The book is addressed to open-minded economists, social scientists who are dissatisfied with the approach of neoclassical economics, technologists and policy makers.

In 1956, Solow proposed a neoclassical growth model in opposition or as an alternative to Keynesian growth models. The Solow model of economic growth provided foundations for models embedded in the new theory of economic growth, known as the theory of endogenous growth, such as the renowned growth models developed by Paul M. Romer and Robert E. Lucas in the 1980s and 90s. The augmentations of the Solow model described in this book, excepting the Phelps golden rules of capital accumulation and the Mankiw-Romer-Weil and Nonneman-Vanhoudt models, were developed by the authors over the last two decades. The book identifies six spheres of interest in modern macroeconomic theory: the impact of fiscal and monetary policy on growth; the effect of different returns to scale on production; the influence of mobility of factors of production among different countries on their development; the effect of population dynamics on growth; the periodicity of investment rates and their influence on growth; and the effect of exogenous shocks in the form of an epidemic. For each of these issues, the authors construct and analyze an appropriate growth model that focuses on the description of the specific macroeconomic problem. This book not only continues the neoclassical tradition of thought in economics focused on quantitative economic change but also, and to a significant extent, discusses alternative approaches to certain questions of economic growth, utilizing conclusions that can be drawn from the Solow model. It is a useful tool in analyzing contemporary issues related to growth.

This book establishes that neoclassical economics based on the marginal utility calculus failed to derive a theory of consumer market price discovery consistent with the experimental market evidence. Such markets involve inherently discrete final-demand items bought for consumption and not subject to resale. Classical economists following Adam Smith articulated a rich narrative of price discovery theory consistent with experimental evidence based on operational concepts of discrete demand values (maximum willingness-to-pay), and symmetrically, supply costs (minimum willingness-to-accept). We develop and extend a mathematical model of classical market price formation. Chapter 1 & 2 describes this theme and chapter 3 connects it with experiments. Chapter 4 builds on experimental examples for an intuitive overview of the theory. A partial equilibrium version of the theory constitutes Chapter 5. Chapter 6 extends this framework to price formation by wealth constrained agents in multiple-goods markets. Chapter 7 applies this framework to the study of re-tradable durable-goods and financial claims that are subject to sources of instability absent in markets for consumer non-durables.

Some years ago, The Economist carried a lead editorial, ‘The puzzling failure of economics'. The frank admission was provoked by the publication of a new edition of Paul Samuelson's Economist. The editorial concluded that it ‘is not a failure of economics, in fact, but of modern [neo-classical] economics'.The authors argue there is nothing puzzling about this failure. They document how the integrity of economics as a discipline was deliberately compromised towards the end of the 19th century. The tool for this strategy became new-classical economics. Classical economists like Adam Smith had described wealth as the product of three factors – land, labour and capital, whereas the new theorists reduced these to two, labour and capital, treating land as capital. The effect, the authors reveal, was to deprive professional economists of the ability to diagnose problems, forecast important trends and prescribe solutions. Neo-classical economics condemns the post-industrial economy to protracted periods of economic failure. The contributors are … in tune with the increasing realization by economists of the importance of the property market to the macroeconomy.

There is controversy among economists over just what it is that economists should do.The controversy is centered on the question whether what is called “neoclassical” or “mainstream” economics provides the appropriate template for performing economic analysis. Neoclassical economics is based on the principle that economic behavior is guided by “rational choice,” i.e., choice based on reason rather than sentiment.Challenges to this principle come from several fields of study: behavioral economics, neuroeconomics, Austrian economics, Keynesian economics, and others. A common thread running through these fields is that the rational choice assumption is unrealistic and therefore not useful for analyzing economic policy choices.It is important, however, to distinguish between economic policy choices, which are frequently irrational, and how individuals are observed to react to these choices. Examples of irrational policy choices are minimum wage laws, buy-American rules, and corporate tax increases. The job of the economist is to play a role akin to that of preachers, in exposing such choices for their irrationality. Mainstream economics shows that people react to these choices in a manner that impairs the performance of the economy.

Economic Biology and Behavioral Economics: The Prophesy of Alfred Marshall explores the prophesy of Alfred Marshall, the grand synthesizer of neoclassical economics, that the'Mecca of the economist lies in economic biology'.The book presents the proof of that prophesy through examination and establishment of the fundamental biological science necessary and then applying that science to the examination of current economic theory. In doing so, the book focuses primarily on the fundamentals of neoclassical economic theory— which is the reigning theory and the general framework of which is taught as'science'in first courses in college economics. These courses are at best an idealization, if not an ideology, of the discipline—presented to fresh minds misleadingly as confirmed science. The book examines the bases and the history of these idealizations, points to the sources of their error from the biological perspective and suggests a path forward for the discipline. Through this process, the book demonstrates the power of the biological perspective anticipated by Marshall.This book provides invaluable reading for anyone interested in the future of economics and economic theory, and particularly those interested in behavioral economics and neuroeconomics.

I​n 1865, economist William Stanley Jevons published The Coal Question, describing the crucial role that coal played in British economic development. Here, he enunciated what has come to be known as the Jevons paradox, which stated that improvements in resource efficiency leads to greater resource use as the expansion of scale occasioned by lower operating costs overwhelms the savings due to greater efficiency. The implications for any sustainability scenario are enormous and a major theme of this book. While The Coal Question provided the theory that was a precursor to peak oil and resource limits to growth, it was followed six years later by the Theory of Political Economy, the first English-language work of neoclassical economics, which denies the importance of energy as a special commodity. In spite of this apparent contradiction, in this book biophysical economist Kent Klitgaard makes clear that there is no epistemological break between The Coal Question and Theory of Political Economy. Indeed, the Jevons paradox makes little sense in the absence of a behavioral theory grounded in marginal utility, which recognizes the satisfaction that each of us gains as consumers of one more unit of a good or service. Jevons could not solve this paradox in light of his belief that coal mines were becoming exhausted and more expensive to operate, and that there was no substitute for coal. However, he was uninterested in questions of sustainability; rather, he wanted to maintain British industrial and imperial dominance. Did the eventual substitution of oil for coal simply allow us to run through other resources at an accelerated rate? Indeed, the petroleum economy of the 20th and early 21st centuries has presented vastly expanded opportunities for the operation of the Jevons Paradox. This book shows the connections among the different paradoxes in Jevons'work, and exposes the potentially fatal flaws that confound technological solutions to the sustainability challenge.

Neoclassical economics has been criticized from various angles by orthodox schools. The same can be said about its particular branch: the theory of the firm.This book demonstrates how a successful theory of the firm can be presented without flawed notions of a neoclassical framework and used to comprehend actual business history. The author argues that we should start from the assumption that businesses are inevitably imponderable, as that is their nature, in the process of economic evolution. The book offers an in-depth exploration of neoclassical limitations by examining each of the small details associated with the famous MR = MC rule. It follows a step-by-step approach, which starts off with neoclassical assumptions and then moves into more empirically sound theory, based on modeling logic and rooted in real world examples. The author presents a novel discussion on the size of the firm, both in terms of classifying a firm's expansion and about the factors that limit the size of the firm and argues how formal pricing theory can be built using more indeterminate assumptions about firms. Further, there is a discussion on how firms are rooted in amorphous industries, which helps to explain economic progress better by emphasizing the importance of economic experiments, mistakes and bankruptcies.This is a valuable reference for scholars and researchers who are interested in a range of topics from microeconomics, through pricing theory to industrial organization, history of economic thought and managerial economics.

This book presents an integrated jurisprudential critique of neoclassical microeconomic theory. It explains what is ‘really wrong'with the theory both descriptively, as well as normatively. The criticism presented is based on questions of jurisprudence, and on neoclassical theory's sins of omission and commission concerning the underlying system of property and contract. On the positive side - while the presentation is almost entirely non-mathematical - the book contains the first mathematical treatment of the fundamental theorem about property and contract in jurisprudence that underlies a market economy.The book follows the tradition of John Stuart Mill as the last major political economist who considered the study of property rights as an integral part of economic theory. The conceptual criticisms presented in this book focus on the descriptive and normative misconceptions about property and contracts that are deeply embedded ideology in neoclassical economics, not to mention in the broader society. The book recognizes that the idealized microeconomic theory is not descriptive of reality and focuses its criticism on conceptual mistakes in the theory, which are even clearer due to the idealized nature of the theory. Therefore, the book is a must-read for scholars, researchers, and students interested in a better understanding of jurisprudence in economics, neoclassical microeconomic theory, and political economy in general.

限定合理性、満足化といったサイモンの中心命題について、徹底した考察を行い、サイモンの思考形成プロセスを詳細に辿った。

This collection of essays of provides a comprehensive and detailed account of several aspects of the Cambridge School of Economics, which featured a number of outstanding figures such as Keynes, Sraffa, Kahn, and Joan Robinson. Scholars interested in heterodox economics, the history of economic thought and political economy will find in this book the Keynesian leitmotivs—the fight against unemployment, and the roles of money and uncertainty—which make Keynes's legacy relevant for today's world. The contributions here are written in the spirit of Keynes, and are persuasive and accessible to the general public.

For at least a half-century, there has been active debate on the nature of the economy between classical and neoclassical economists and advocates of a more -substantivist- approach (most recently, cultural anthropologists)... The essays are uniformly well written and excellently documented... Heartily recommended for academic libraries, community college level up. --S. M. Soiffer, Choice

This book deals with central elements of the cultural, political and social background of Austrian economic theory in general and Menger's version of it in particular. It draws on Menger's theoretical writings as well as on his explicitly methodological works as source material.

'This is one of the most important pieces of research to come out in ecological macroeconomics in the last 20 years, alongside Peter Victor's'Managing Without Growth', and Tim Jackson's'Prosperity Without Growth'. It is the first and only attempt to systematically work out the conditions for zero growth under different economic models.'(Giorgos Kallis, Research Professor of Ecological Economics, Autonomous University of Barcelona)'Steffen Lange has provided an amazing piece of work. The book has good chances of becoming a standard work for ecological economists in due course.'(Arne Heise, Professor of Macroeconomics, University of Hamburg) How can we organize our economies without growth?'Macroeconomics Without Growth'provides a comprehensive understanding of how non-growing economies can be sustainable. With this book, Steffen Lange brings new momentum into the debate on post-growth, degrowth and steady state economies. The book delves deep into economic theory to understand how a macro-economy can operate without growth. By applying a highly diverse set of theories - from Neoclassical, Keynesian and Marxian traditions - the book is able to cover a wide range of macroeconomic aspects: Is zero growth possible in a capitalist economic system? What happens to aggregate demand and aggregate supply when economies stop growing? And what role do firms, markets and technological change play in post-growth economies? Steffen Lange conclusively shows that sustainable economies without growth are feasible from a macroeconomic perspective. However, small changes will not suffice. Rather, key economic institutions and dynamics need to be rearranged: the prices of labour and natural resources, the structures of companies, the framework of markets - just to name a few.'Macroeconomics Without Growth'is the first economics book to investigate nongrowing economies in a comprehensive manner. It is a must read both for economists who want to use economics for a sustainable future, and for environmentalists who want to understand the economic principles of sustainable transformations.

First published in 1997, this volume was undertaken to provide a means to introduce new thinking in economics which have been considered a counter-revolution with regards to the core framework of economic analysis. Stanley Bober explores areas including the theory of household income, the role of prices, growth analysis and Keynesian economics. The book pays particular attention to the Kaldor-Pasinetti income distribution models as they relate to aggregate saving along with the Harrod-Domar macro-dynamic growth paths.

This collection includes translated works by Japanese women writers that deal with the experiences of modern women. The work of these women represents current feminist perception, imagination and thought.

Mainstream economics almost completely ignores the role power plays in determining economic outcomes, which means it can only provide partial explanations of the distribution of wealth and income, and of the problems associated with inequality and poverty. For many, this is a fundamental failing that severely limits its relevance to the real world and is the source of much dissatisfaction with, and cynicism about, economics and economists. Ozanne explains how this neglect of power has come about over the past 150 years and why it is important. He reviews various definitions and theories of power from across the social sciences and proposes a new approach that could bring considerations of power back into standard economic theory and economics teaching. The approach is simple and intuitive, involving little more than re-envisioning the social welfare function as a'political economy function'. However, if adopted in economics teaching, it could radically change the way young economistsare taught to think about economic problems and lead to a'return to political economy'.

Information is a central concept in economics, and The Knowledge We Have Lost in Information explores its treatment in modern economics. The study of information, far from offering enlightenment, resulted in all matter of confusion for economists and the public. Philip Mirowski and Edward Nik-Khah argue that the conventional wisdom suggesting'economic rationality'was the core of modern economics is incomplete. In this trenchant investigation, they demonstrate that the history of modern microeconomics is better organized as a history of the treatment of information. The book begins with a brief primer on information, and then shows how economists have responded over time to successive developments on the concept of information in the natural sciences. Mirowski and Nik-Khah detail various intellectual battles that were fought to define, analyze, and employ information in economics. As these debates developed, economists progressively moved away from pure agent conscious self-awareness as a non-negotiable desideratum of economic models toward a focus on markets and their design as information processors. This has led to a number of policies, foremost among them: auction design of resources like the electromagnetic spectrum crucial to modern communications. The Knowledge We Have Lost in Information provides insight into the interface between disputes within the economics discipline and the increasing role of information in contemporary society. Mirowski and Nik-Khah examine how this intersection contributed to the dominance of neoliberal approaches to economics, politics, and other realms.

Despite some diversification modern economics still attracts a great deal of criticism. This is largely due to highly unrealistic assumptions underpinning economic theory, explanatory failure, poor policy framing, and a dubious focus on prediction. Many argue that flaws continue to owe much of their shortcomings to neoclassical economics. As a result, what we mean by neoclassical economics remains a significant issue. This collection addresses the issue from a new perspective, taking as its point of departure Tony Lawson's essay ‘What is this ‘school'called neoclassical economics?'. Few terms are as controversial for pluralist and heterodox economists as neoclassical economics. This controversy has many aspects because the term itself has different specifications and connotations. Within this multiplicity what we mean by neoclassical matters to pluralist and heterodox economists for two primary reasons. First, because it informs how we view and critique the mainstream; second, because the relationship between heterodox and mainstream economics influences how heterodox economists model, apply methods and construct theory. The chapters in this collection each have different things to say about these matters, with contributions ranging across the work of key thinkers, such as Thorstein Veblen and Kenneth Arrow, applied issues of non-linear modelling of dynamic systems, and key events in the history of economics. This book will be of use to those interested in methodology, political economy, heterodoxy, and the history of economic thought.

This book is in equal parts a treatise on morality and economics, a critique of neoclassical orthodoxy, a brief for replacing mainstream economics with a radical political economics, and an argument for the abandonment of neoliberal capitalism in favor of democratic socialism. It includes a detailed proposal for a'demand and cost'alternative to'supply and demand'analysis and an in-depth technical critique of both neoclassical'high theory'and'applied microeconomic analysis'demonstrating that these are not only infeasible or immoral, but have directly contributed to public policy disasters. Further, the book suggests that only a moral economics in the form of radical political economy can address the looming economic and environmental crises of today's world.Baiman begins with an introduction to morality and ethics in both general sciences and in economics in particular. He then guides readers through evidence of how neoclassical economics has not only failed to remain objective and value-free, but has become an ideology of apologetics protecting an immoral system. In addition to breaking down real-world examples to demonstrate his assertions, Baiman analyzes a theoretical Utopia design exercise. He concludes by arguing that the only form of economics that supports widely shared human values—such as social equity, democracy, and solidarity—is so-called'radical economics', and that all true economics science should be directed toward achieving more socially productive economic activity. An invaluable guide to morality and economics, this book will appeal to researchers and teachers looking to change the way we think about economics, policy, and society.

These essays on Post-Keynesian economics were written expressly for a volume to honour the life and work of Alfred Eichner. The original countributions - that critically examine and extend ideas in Eichner's'The Macrodynamics of Advanced Market Economies'are organized in seven sections that correspond to areas of economics in which Eichner made a significant contribution. Part 1 deals with the megacorp, a theory of firm pricing and investment that was one of Eichner's most important contributions. Issues of productivity and technical change, that lie at the center of Eichner's macrodynamic model, are the focus of part 1 and parts 3 and 4 elaborate on Eichner's work on growth and money and yield insights into the theoretical disagreements among the Post-Keynesians themselves. Part 5 presents a number of examples of non-neo-classical model building. Part 6 opens with a critique of the'new economic history'that leads to other essays on thorny methodological issues confronting Post-Keynesians. Part 7 gives a European perspective on North American Post-Keynesian economics. The essays reveal the relationships between Eichner's work and Institutionalist and Marxian economics. At the same time, the book raises current theoretical conflicts among these groups as well as among Post-Keynesians themselves. This book compliments Alfred S.Eichner's'The Macrodynamics of Advanced Market Economies', also published in 1991, and is appropriate for scholars and upper-level undergraduates and graduate students.

Joseph A. Schumpeter (1883–1950) gehört zu den bedeutendsten Ökonomen des 20. Jahrhunderts und sein Werk leistet noch immer Wissenschaftlern wichtige Dienste. Bis heute verwenden wir viele von ihm eingeführte Begriffe wie beispielsweise Innovation und Unternehmertum ganz selbstverständlich. Obwohl Schumpeters »Theorie der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung« als Hauptwerk seines akademischen Schaffens gilt, stand eine ausführliche Betrachtung und Würdigung seiner evolutionsanalytischen Perspektive bislang aus. Esben Sloth Andersen liefert nun mit diesem Band eine ebenso aufschlussreiche wie leserfreundliche Einführung in Schumpeters Leben und Werk. Andersen untersucht hierzu sowohl die allgemeinen Merkmale als auch die Weiterentwicklung der Arbeiten Schumpeters, die bis heute moderne Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftler in ihrer Komplexität herausfordern.

This book examines new classical macroeconomics from a comparative and critical point of view that confronts the original texts and later comments as a first dimension of comparison. The second dimension appears in a historical context, since none of the new classical doctrines can be analyzed ignoring the parallelism and discrepancies with the theory of Keynes, Friedman or Phelps. Radicalism of new classical macroeconomics has brought fundamental changes in economic thought, but the doctrines got vulgarized and distorted thanks to the mass of followers. Nowadays, economic theory and policy, trying to find their ways, have a less clear relationship than ever. Therefore, this volume is aimed at mapping and reconsidering the policy instruments and transmission mechanisms offered by the new classicals. Its central question points to the real nature of new classical macroeconomics: what consequences are grounded by the assumptions new classicals used. Moreover, issues raised by automatic fiscal stabilizers and fiscal reforms are analyzed as well, even if they were out of the range of classical texts. The book draws a picture of new classical macroeconomics stressing the analogies with Keynesian countercyclical policies, instead of the discrepancies commonly held.

How did neoclassical monetary economics, as epitomized by the work of Fisher, Wicksell, and the Cambridge School, evolve from the classical orthodoxy that dominated economics in the 1870s? To answer this question, David Laidler considers the interaction of theoretical developments with contemporary policy debates about bimetallism and the evolution of the gold exchange standard. He argues that neoclassical monetary economics, in which the quantity theory of money played a central role, laid the intellectual groundwork for the replacement of the gold standard by various managed monetary systems in the years following World War I. Laidler is one of the world's foremost experts on monetary economics, and this book provides an illuminating account and analysis of one of the most important periods in the development of that field. Scholars of the history of economic thought and all monetary economists will find that The Golden Age of the Quantity Theory is the most systematic treatment of the development of monetary economics between 1870 and 1914 currently available.Originally published in 1991.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This book provides a critique of the neoclassical explanations of the 2008 financial collapse, of the ensuing long recession and of the neoliberal austerity responses to it. The study argues that while the prevailing views of deregulation and financialization as instrumental culprits in the explosion and implosion of the financial bubble are not false, they fail to point out that financialization is essentially an indication of an advanced stage of capitalist development. These standard explanations tend to ignore the systemic dynamics of the accumulation of finance capital, the inherent limits to that accumulation, production and division of economic surplus, class relations, and the balance of social forces that mold economic policy.Instead of simply blaming the ‘irrational behavior'of market players, as neoliberals do, or lax public supervision, as Keynesians do, this book focuses on the core dynamics of capitalist development that not only created the financial bubble, but also fostered the ‘irrational behavior'of market players and subverted public policy.Due to its interdisciplinary perspective, this book will be of interest to students and researchers in economics, finance, politics and sociology.

Macroeconomics Simplified explains the intuition behind Keynesian and neoclassical macroeconomics using graphs and simple algebra. It provides students with a strong conceptual basis for understanding the tension between Keynesian and neoclassical systems that has once again came to the forefront since the 2007–08 financial crisis. The book shows how theoretical perspectives affect macroeconomic policy choices and proposes a pragmatic approach to policy that is sensitive to prevailing economic conditions. Students of economics and business alike will enjoy its concise and engaging analysis and find the applications and references to the Indian economy helpful.

This book examines how the Cambridge School economists, such as J. M. Keynes, constructed revolutionary theories and advocated drastic policies based on their ideals for social organizations and their personal characteristics. Although vast numbers of studies on Marshall, Keynes and Marshallians have been published, there have been very few studies on the ‘Keynesian Revolution'or Keynes's relevance to the modern world from archival and intellectual viewpoints which focus on Keynes as a member of the Cambridge School. This book approaches Keynes from three directions: person, time and perspective. The book provides a better understanding of how Keynes struggled with problems of his time and it also offers valuable lessons on how to survive fluctuating global capitalism today. It focuses on eight key economists as a group in ‘a public sphere'rather than as a school (a unified theoretical denominator), and clarifies their visions and the widespread beliefs at the time by investigating their common motivations, lifestyles, values and habits.

Alfred Marshall was anxious to do good. Intended by an Evangelical father for the vocation of clergyman, the author of the mould-shaping Principles of Economics remained to the end of his days a great preacher deeply committed to raising the tone of life. First published in 1990, Alfred Marshall's Mission explains how this most moral of political economists sought to blend the downward sloping utility function of Jevons and Menger with the organic evolutionism of Darwin and Spencer, how this celebrated theorist of social alongside economic growth sought to combine the mathematical marginalism of Cournot. Thunen and Edgeworth with the ethical uplift of Green, Jowett and Toynbee. The conclusion reached is that perhaps Marshall was, after all, too anxious to do good. Far more economists, however, have been not anxious enough; and that in itself gives this study of Marshall's life and times a present day relevance which would, no doubt, have appealed strongly to the shy Cambridge professor who is its subject.

The marginalist revolution of the late nineteenth century consolidated what Karl Marx and Piero Sraffa called ‘vulgar economy', bringing with it an emphasis on a scarcity theory that replaced the classical surplus theory. However, the classical political economy of Adam Smith and David Ricardo has been revived within the Cambridge economic tradition. This book looks at how different branches of the Cambridge economic tradition have focused on various aspects of this revival over time.The author shows that classical political economy is distinct from vulgar political economy in terms of its economic, social, and ethical theory, with each difference resting on an issue of ontology. Structured in three parts, the book examines the central contested aspects of these theories, namely the nature of value, the relationship between human beings and social structure, and the nature of human wellbeing. The Cambridge Revival of Political Economy will be relevant to students and researchers within the fields of political economy, history of economic thought, politics and philosophy.

Some of the fundamental tenets of conventional economic wisdom, which have had a profound impact on public policy, are challenged in this book. These precepts include the affirmation that low wages are more beneficial that high wages to the process of growth and development; convergence in terms of output per person is just a matter of time; minimum wage laws and trade unions negatively impact on the economy as a whole; pay inequality due to labor market discrimination cannot persist over time; larger firms are typically more efficient than smaller firms; and culture is of little consequence to the course of economic development. Such predictions, the author argues, are a product of unrealistic behavioral assumptions about the economic agent. In this book, the author offers a more inclusive theoretical framework and a more reasonable modeling of the economic agent. This new approach is built upon conventional neoclassical theory while incorporating the most recent research in behavioral economics. The case is made that individuals have some choice over the quantity and quality of effort which they can supply in the process of production. Even under the constraints of severe product market competition and the assumption of `utility maximizing'individuals, effort need not be maximized, especially in firms characterized by antagonistic management-labor relations. This is especially true when relatively inefficient firms can remain competitive by keeping wages relatively low - low wages serve to protect such firms from more efficient firms. Alternatively, relatively high wage firms can remain competitive only if they become more productive. Under these assumptions, higher wages and factors contributing to higher wages can advance the performance of an economy while lower wages can have the opposite effect and cultural and institutional variables, by themselves, can affect the long run productivity and even the long run competitiveness of firms and economies. In summary, this book calls for a revised approach to the study of economics from a behavioral and socio-economic perspective, with significant consequences for public policy.

A systematic comparison of the three major economic theories, showing how they differ and why these differences matter in shaping economic theory and practice.Contending Economic Theories offers a unique comparative treatment of the three main theories in economics as it is taught today: neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian. Each is developed and discussed in its own chapter, yet also differentiated from and compared to the other two theories. The authors identify each theory's starting point, its goals and foci, and its internal logic. They connect their comparative theory analysis to the larger policy issues that divide the rival camps of theorists around such central issues as the role government should play in the economy and the class structure of production, stressing the different analytical, policy, and social decisions that flow from each theory's conceptualization of economics.The authors, building on their earlier book Economics: Marxian versus Neoclassical, offer an expanded treatment of Keynesian economics and a comprehensive introduction to Marxian economics, including its class analysis of society. Beyond providing a systematic explanation of the logic and structure of standard neoclassical theory, they analyze recent extensions and developments of that theory around such topics as market imperfections, information economics, new theories of equilibrium, and behavioral economics, considering whether these advances represent new paradigms or merely adjustments to the standard theory. They also explain why economic reasoning has varied among these three approaches throughout the twentieth century, and why this variation continues today—as neoclassical views give way to new Keynesian approaches in the wake of the economic collapse of 2008.

Economic development is a process of continuous technological innovation and structural transformation. Development thinking is inherently tied to the quest for sustainable growth strategies. This book provides a neoclassical approach for studying the determinants of economic structure and its transformation and draws new insights for development policy. The market is the basic mechanism for effective resource allocation at each level of development. However, economic development as a dynamic process entails structural changes, including industrial upgrading and diversification and corresponding improvements in hard and soft infrastructure. Such upgrading and improvements require coordination and go hand in hand with large externalities to firms'transaction costs and returns to capital investment. Thus, in addition to an effective market mechanism, the government should play an active role in facilitating structural changes. The book provides empirical evidence in support of this framework as well as concrete advice to development practitioners.

Die Marktwirtschaft, wie sie bisher in Form der Neoklassik in der Geschichte Realisierung gefunden hat, ist als reduktionistische Konstruktion zurückzuweisen bzw. ist fortgesetzt zu einem adäquaten Verstehen von Wirtschaft und ihrer Bedeutung vorzudringen. Dieses Vordringen, das die Marktwirtschaft nicht verlässt (!), muss von einer konsequent philosophischen – dialektischen – Argumentation getragen sein, der es alleine zukommt, die Menschen ihrer Würde gemäß betrachten zu können. Die Neoklassik verweigert den Diskurs mit der dialektischen Philosophie, da sie anders ihre begründungstheoretischen Defizite nicht maskieren kann. In Form der Position J. M. Keynes'ist der bisher geschichtlich realisierten Marktwirtschaft ein Denken erwachsen, das den Weg zu dem adäquaten Verstehen der Bedeutung der Wirtschaft aus ökonomischer Perspektive vorzeigt. Dieses Buch skizziert, wieso die Bedeutung der Wirtschaft notwendig aus einer philosophischen Argumentation heraus zu verstehen ist, wie diese aussieht, wie sie mit der fachwissenschaftlich-ökonomischen Argumentation zu verknüpfen ist und wieso es Keynes'Position ist, die hierbei mit der philosophischen Argumentation zu verflechten ist.

This is not a festschrift, but a study of the prodigious Samuelson phe­ nomenon, his history-making contributions to and impact on the econom­ ics of our age, and the intricate, often perplexing, and divergent trends in modern economics - all intensely controversial subjects that will be argued, scrutinized, and periodically reassessed by economists of various strands and traditions for years to come, for, as Samuelson wrote of Pigou,'immortality does have its price.'A scholar with such an out­ standing body of contributions'must expect other men to swarm about it'(1966, p. 1233), subject it to scholarly scrutiny, and challenge it. Although Paul Samuelson was 65 on May 15, 1980 (and our best wishes go out to him for long life and continued enrichment of economics), this is neither a birthday party nor a gathering of only the Good Fairies, for, as he himself has said of Marx,'a great scholar deserves the compliment of being judged seriously'and critically (1972, p. 268). In accordance with the rule of Roman law, audiatur et altera pars, I have invited representative scholars of widely divergent perceptions to offer their critical evaluation of the'age of Samuelson.'While the response was by and large gratifying, some scholars were unable to meet the deadline, ix x PREFACE and with much compunction I have had to expand my own essays to partly fill the gaps.

Warren J. Samuels Each book in this series explores the present status of its field in terms of where it is, how it got there, the existing tensions within the field, and something of how the field might develop in the future. Each book presumes that work in each field is neither settled nor unequivocal. Each book attempts to comprehend its field as an evolving, developmental process or set or efforts. This particular book, covering neoclassical economics, is the third of three in the field of the History of Economic Thought. The others are Pre-Classical Economic Thought, edited by S. Todd Lowry, and Classical Political Economy, edited by William O. Thweatt. Each one conducts the same kind of analysis as the others in the series, with the understanding that here we are dealing with the history of interpretation, rather than a substantive body of analysis of a certain aspect of the economy: for example, labor or international trade. (That understanding must be com­ plex and subtle, inasmuch as revision of interpretation of earlier ideas is part of the process-both cause and consequence-of re-analyzing the economy.) In this group we are interested in how recent and contemporary writers have interpreted the history of economic thought differently, both among themselves and from earlier writers. 1 NEOCLASSICAL ECONOMIC lHEORY 2 Several topics must be discussed to place such work in perspective, in part as it is here applied to the history of the interpretation of neoclassical economics.

In the course of this book it is argued that the loss of what is essentially'macro'in Keynes is the result of a preference for a form of equilibrium analysis that gives unqualified support to the ideology of free markets. In the case of Marx, his theory of exploitation and from this the stress on class struggle, led to an almost complete neglect of his contribution to the analysis of the aggregate demand and supply of commodities.

Alfred Marshall has traditionally been listed alongside pioneering'neoclassical'economists. In this volume Neil Hart challenges this view, illuminating the ambiguities within Marshall's work, and exploring his reconciliation of two modes of thinking, equilibrium economics and evolutionary economics.

Heinz Kurz is recognised internationally as a leading economic theorist and a foremost historian of economic thought. This book pays tribute to his outstanding contributions on the occasion of his 65th birthday by bringing together a unique collection of new essays by distinguished economists from around the world.Keynes, Sraffa, and the Criticism of Neoclassical Theory comprises twenty-three essays, covering themes in Keynesian economic theory, in the development of the modern classical approach to economic theory, linear production models, and the critique of neoclassical theory. The essays in this book will be an invaluable source of inspiration for economists interested in economic theory and in the evolution of economic thought. They will also be of interest to postgraduate and research students specialising in economic theory and in the history of economic thought.

In The Delusions of Economics, Gilbert Rist presents a radical critique of neoclassical economics from a social and historical perspective. Rather than enter into existing debates between different orthodoxies, Rist instead explores the circumstances that prevailed when economics was'invented', and the resultant biases that helped forge the construction of economics as a'science'. In doing so, Rist demonstrates how these various presuppositions are either obsolete or just plain wrong, and that traditional economics is largely based on irrational convictions that are difficult to debunk due to their'religious'nature. As a result, we are prevented from properly understanding the world around us and dealing with the financial, environmental, and climatic crises that lie ahead. Provocative and original, this essential book provides incontrovertible proof that the construction of a new economic paradigm - pluralistic, ecologically compatible, grounded in reality - has now become a necessity.

Why are we in such a financial mess today? There are lots of proximate causes: over-leverage, global imbalances, bad financial technology that lead to widespread underestimation of risk. But these are all symptoms. Until we isolate and tackle fundamental causes, we will fail to extirpate the disease. ECONned is the first book to examine the unquestioned role of economists as policy-makers, and how they helped create an unmitigated economic disaster.Here, Yves Smith looks at how economists in key policy positions put doctrine before hard evidence, ignoring the deteriorating conditions and rising dangers that eventually led them, and us, off the cliff and into financial meltdown. Intelligently written for the layman, Smith takes us on a terrifying investigation of the financial realm over the last twenty-five years of misrepresentations, naive interpretations of economic conditions, rationalizations of bad outcomes, and rejection of clear signs of growing instability. In eConned, author Yves Smith reveals:--why the measures taken by the Obama Administration are mere palliatives and are unlikely to pave the way for a solid recovery--how economists have come to play a profoundly anti-democratic role in policy--how financial models and concepts that were discredited more than thirty years ago are still widely used by banks, regulators, and investors--how management and employees of major financial firms looted them, enriching themselves and leaving the mess to taxpayers--how financial regulation enabled predatory behavior by Wall Street towards investors --how economics has no theory of financial systems, yet economists fearlessly prescribe how to manage them

`In Alfred Marshall's theory of the human mind, the development of knowledge is conditioned, though not determined, by the context in which it occurs; by a natural extension, so is the interpretation, response to and use of knowledge. That is the organising principle of this book, and no one is better equipped to apply it than the team which produced The Elgar Companion to Alfred Marshall. What we can learn from these studies has wide application in economics - and beyond.'---Brian Loasby, University of Stirling, UK`The team responsible for producing the exemplary Elgar Companion to Alfred Marshall in 2006 has now assembled this complementary volume which contains an equally authoritative collection of studies dealing with the fortuna or intellectual and cultural impact of Marshallian economics in Britain, Europe, North America, Australasia, and Asia. Together the books make an invaluable contribution to the reassessment of Marshall's reputation and the diffusion of his economic ideas.'---Donald Winch, University of Sussex, UKThis is a unique and detailed book which surveys the diffusion and reception of Alfred Marshall's ideas and the ways they have influenced the development of economic science up to the present day.This is an accessible and extremely readable work offering an interesting perspective on the national traditions of economic thought, in both English and non-English speaking countries, as well as on the work of leading economists. As this work demonstrates, the variety of responses elicited by Alfred Marshall's thought testifies to its richness as well as to the plurality of conceptions of the role and tasks of economics in different times and places. This book complements the authors'previous work The Elgar Companion to Alfred Marshall.The Impact of Alfred Marshall's Ideas will appeal to researchers and academics at all levels of economics and especially the history of economic thought.

This book provides a systematic account of financial crisis in the developing world by exploring how Minsky's theory may be extended to countries at early stages of financial development, going beyond the parameters of the established'emerging market crisis'literature.

Lluís Barbé has recreated the background and life of Francis Ysidro Edgeworth through a fascinating reconstruction that succeeds in shaping the first detailed biography ever published of this major economist and statistician.Originating from previously unexplored letters and documents stored in archives and registers in Ireland, England and Catalonia, Edgeworth''s relationships with his academic fellows –- including Sully, Jevons, Marshall, Galton, Pearson, Walras, Pantaleoni, Fisher, Pareto, Keynes –- are meticulously depicted. Stemming from undiscovered primary sources, this book also reveals a detailed insight into the academic world of the period 1875–1925 in the fields of economics and statistics.With a descriptive survey of Edgeworth''s work, this book will prove a captivating read for academics and postgraduate students in economic analysis, the history of economic thought and the history of statistics. Anyone with an interest in Francis Ysidro Edgeworth''s life should also read this book.