First published in 1986. Since the late 1960s the seeming inability of traditional monetary and fiscal policies to combat " stagflation" and address other macroeconomic issues has accelerated the erosion of confidence in the prevailing economic paradigm , the " neoclassical synthesis." * Dissensions among the members of the economics profession on both sides of the Atlantic have grown in number. By the 1970s, a majority of economists had recognized a " crisis" in economic theory. Parallel to this development, a crisis has also emerged in the Marxian camp. This volume is a discussion from the various schools of thought around three of the salient common grounds follows: the theory of a monetary economy, the disequilibrium foundations of a general equilibrium theory, and a rekindled interest in institutional factors.
First published in 1986. Since the late 1960s the seeming inability of traditional monetary and fiscal policies to combat " stagflation" and address other macroeconomic issues has accelerated the erosion of confidence in the prevailing economic paradigm , the " neoclassical synthesis." * Dissensions among the members of the economics profession on both sides of the Atlantic have grown in number. By the 1970s, a majority of economists had recognized a " crisis" in economic theory. Parallel to this development, a crisis has also emerged in the Marxian camp. This volume is a discussion from the various schools of thought around three of the salient common grounds follows: the theory of a monetary economy, the disequilibrium foundations of a general equilibrium theory, and a rekindled interest in institutional factors.
Labour: A Heterodox Approach provides a theoretical reconstruction of the labour and job market by examining it in a rich historical context. It explores the fundamental implications of the theories of consumption and growth and aims at solving the difficulties raised by the dominant economic theories (neoclassical, Keynesian, supply side) by taking into account the dimension of the historical conflict of the labour market and the public intervention that results from it, such as the construction of a specific legal framework that is to say, labour law. The work focuses on providing a description of conflict and intervention, the market's leading characteristics, and demonstrates that they can be interpreted by introducing two major remedial hypotheses in economic fundamentals. It also contributes to solving several theoretical controversies and highlights the two main perspectives on the economic regulation of the labour market.
An exploration of how approaches that draw on evolutionary theory and complexity science can advance our understanding of economics. Two widely heralded yet contested approaches to economics have emerged in recent years: one emphasizes evolutionary theory in terms of individuals and institutions; the other views economies as complex adaptive systems. In this book, leading scholars examine these two bodies of theory, exploring their possible impact on economics. Relevant concepts from evolutionary theory drawn on by the contributors include the distinction between proximate and ultimate causation, multilevel selection, cultural change as an evolutionary process, and human psychology as a product of gene-culture coevolution. Applicable ideas from complexity theory include self-organization, fractals, chaos theory, sensitive dependence, basins of attraction, and path dependence. The contributors discuss a synthesis of complexity and evolutionary approaches and the challenges that emerge. Focusing on evolutionary behavioral economics, and the evolution of institutions, they offer practical applications and point to avenues for future research. Contributors Robert Axtell, Jenna Bednar, Eric D. Beinhocker, Adrian V. Bell, Terence C. Burnham, Julia Chelen, David Colander, Iain D. Couzin, Thomas E. Currie, Joshua M. Epstein, Daniel Fricke, Herbert Gintis, Paul W. Glimcher, John Gowdy, Thorsten Hens, Michael E. Hochberg, Alan Kirman, Robert Kurzban, Leonhard Lades, Stephen E. G. Lea, John E. Mayfield, Mariana Mazzucato, Kevin McCabe, John F. Padgett, Scott E. Page, Karthik Panchanathan, Peter J. Richerson, Peter Schuster, Georg Schwesinger, Rajiv Sethi, Enrico Spolaore, Sven Steinmo, Miriam Teschl, Peter Turchin, Jeroen C. J. M. van den Bergh, Sander E. van der Leeuw, Romain Wacziarg, John J. Wallis, David S. Wilson, Ulrich Witt
This book, set out over three volumes, provides a comprehensive history of economic thought in the 20th century with special attention to the cultural and historical background in the development of theories, to the leading or the peripheral research communities and their interactions or controversies, and finally to an assessment and critical appreciation of economic theories throughout these times. It takes as its subject matter the canon of publications by major thinkers who self-consciously conceived of themselves as 'economists' in the modern academic sense of the term. It is a history of how, when and where the discipline of Economics took root in major universities and scientific communities of economists, and evaluates the emergence of different 'schools' of thoughts. Volume I addresses economic theory in the golden age of capitalism. It considers the contributions of Marshall, Pareto, Wicksteed, Schmoller, Bohm-Bawerk, Schumpeter, Wicksell, Fisher, Veblen and other major thinkers, as well as the universities of Cambridge, Lausanne, Vienna, Berlin, and some others in US, before concluding with a look at the impact that the great war had on the discipline. This work provides a significant and original contribution to the history of economic thought and gives insight to the thinking of some of the major international figures in economics as shown in major works published across the last 130 years. It will appeal to students, scholars and the more informed reader wishing to further their understanding of the history of the discipline.
Assembling contributions from top thinkers in the field, thiscompanion offers a comprehensive and sophisticated exploration ofthe history of economic thought. The volume has a threefold focus:the history of economic thought, the history of economics as adiscipline, and the historiography of economic thought. Provides sophisticated introductions to a vast array oftopics. Focuses on a unique range of topics, including the history ofeconomic thought, the history of the discipline of economics, andthe historiography of economic thought.
1. 1 Introduction This book was born out of our reaction to the way in which the usual texts cover the subject of the history of economic thought. In most of these texts, there is a tendency to emphasize the similarities and differences between all the important economists and form a repository of encyclopedic knowledge where one can study the seemingly important economic ideas. In this book, we argue that it is much more fruitful to focus on the essential ideas of each and every school of economic thought and relate them to present-day problems, than to engage into a sterile discussion of the ideas and the lives of the great economists of the past. Thus, although this book deals with the history of economic thought, it does not necessarily follow a historic (in the sense of the order of presentation) approach, but rather a logical one, that is to say it deals with the social conditions associated with the emergence of a school of economic thought, its evolution, and its contemporary in?uence. One cannot write a book on the history of economic thought without writing separate chapters on the major economists of the past, that is, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, and J. M. Keynes. Of course these economists formed schools of economic thought, that is, the classical and the Keynesian.
This book seeks to elucidate its subject-the governing of democratic state-by making intelligible the party politics of democracies. Downs treats this differently than do other students of politics. His explanations are systematically related to, and deducible from, precisely stated assumptions about the motivations that attend the decisions of voters and parties and the environment in which they act. He is consciously concerned with the economy in explanation, that is, with attempting to account for phenomena in terms of a very limited number of facts and postulates. He is concerned also with the central features of party politics in any democratic state, not with that in the United States or any other single country.
In a bold departure from standard economic thinking, this book argues that twentieth century economic theory has marginalized individualism and organizational variety, and puts forward the case for a pluralist approach.
Even a decade after the end of the 1914-1918 war, economic theory assumed that the world was tranquil and orderly. By 1939 an economic slump without parallel, allied to the re-emergence of military ambition in Europe, had brought economic theorists face to face with reality. In this classic book, first published in 1967, Professor Shackle provides a study, in exact and professional language, of the precise nature, structure, presuppositions, language and inter-relations of the theories which were formulated in these fourteen years - unparalleled in the whole history of economics except perhaps by the years of the Physiocrats and Adam Smith. These theories are not prototypes on the way to something better but are of essential and permanent importance.
