Economic Crisis and Economic Thought
Economic Crisis and Economic Thought

Author: Tommaso Gabellini

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-01-23

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 1317215494

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The ongoing economic crisis has revealed fundamental problems both in our economic system and the discipline which analyses it. This book presents a series of contrasting but complementary approaches in economic theory in order to offer a critical toolkit for examining the modern capitalist economy. The global economic crisis may have changed the world in which we live, but not the fundamental tenets of the discipline. This book is a critical assessment of the relation between economic theory and economic crises: how intellectual thinking impacts on real economic events and vice versa. It aims at challenging the conventional way in which economics is taught in universities and later adopted by public officials in the policymaking process. The contributions, all written by distinguished academics and researchers, offer a heterodox perspective on economic thinking and analysis. Each chapter is inspired by alternative theoretical approaches which have been mostly side-lined from current academic teaching programmes. A major suggestion of the book is that the recent economic crisis can be better understood by recovering such theoretical analyses and turning them into a useful framework for economic policymaking. Economic Crisis and Economic Thought is intended as a companion to economics students at the Master’s and PhD level, in order for them to confront issues related to the labour market, the financial sector, macroeconomics, industrial economics, etc. with an alternative and complementary perspective. It challenges the way in which economic theory is currently taught and offered via alternatives for the future.

The Crisis of Vision in Modern Economic Thought
The Crisis of Vision in Modern Economic Thought

Author: Robert L. Heilbroner

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1996-01-26

Total Pages: 148

ISBN-13: 9780521497145

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A deep and widespread crisis affects modern economic theory, a crisis that derives from the absence of a "vision"--a set of widely shared political and social preconceptions--on which all economics ultimately depends. This absence, in turn, reflects the collapse of the Keynesian view that provided such a foundation from 1940 through the early 1970s, comparable to earlier visions provided by Smith, Ricardo, Mill, and Marshall. The "unraveling" of Keynesianism has been followed by a division into discordant and ineffective camps whose common denominator seems to be their shared analytical refinement and lack of practical applicability. This provocative analysis attempts both to describe this state of affairs, and to suggest the direction in which economic thinking must move if it is to regain the relevance and remedial power it now pointedly lacks.

The Global Economic Crisis
The Global Economic Crisis

Author: Emiliano Brancaccio

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-03-01

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 1136724168

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Why did the economists of the so-called "mainstream" seem to fail to foresee the global economic crisis that exploded in 2008? And why do they appear to have difficulty in putting forward an interpretation of it that is consistent with the theoretical foundations of their models? These two questions have echoed insistently since the outbreak of the crisis, not only in academic circles but also in the mass media, and appear to reflect increasingly widespread dissatisfaction with the dominant paradigm of economic theory. Many believe that the global recession now underway may constitute an historic watershed for the evolution of economics and therefore that an authentic change of paradigm is called for, rather than only minor adjustments to the dominant approach. Since the start of the crisis, there has indeed been a profusion of contributions from alternative areas of economic study, and in particular from those adopting a critical stance with respect to mainstream economic theory. This collection puts forward promising reinterpretations of the primary schools of heterodox political economy, stringent critiques of the conventional readings of the recession, new schemes of theoretical and empirical analysis of the crisis, and proposals for economic policies alternative to those hitherto adopted. This book contains a selection of some of the most recent contributions to the critique of mainstream economic theory and policy, and discusses the origins and possible evolutions of the current economic crisis. The collection should be of interest to students and researchers focussing on macroeconomics, monetary economics, political economy and financial economics.

After the Flood
After the Flood

Author: Edward L. Glaeser

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2017-03-23

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 022644354X

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Includes papers presented at a conference held at the Columbia Business School in the spring of 2013 in honor of Josae Scheinkman's 65th birthday.

The End of Theory
The End of Theory

Author: Richard Bookstaber

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2019-04-02

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 0691191859

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An in-depth look at how to account for the human complexities at the heart of today’s financial system Our economy may have recovered from the Great Recession—but not our economics. The End of Theory discusses why the human condition and the radical uncertainty of our world renders the standard economic model—and the theory behind it—useless for dealing with financial crises. What model should replace it? None. At least not any version we’ve been using for the past two hundred years. Richard Bookstaber argues for a new approach called agent-based economics, one that takes as a starting point the fact that we are humans, not the optimizing automatons that standard economics assumes we are. Sweeping aside the historic failure of twentieth-century economics, The End of Theory offers a novel perspective and more realistic framework to help prevent today's financial system from blowing up again.

The Economic Crisis in Social and Institutional Context
The Economic Crisis in Social and Institutional Context

Author: Sebastiano Fadda

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-02-20

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 1317617428

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This book explores the foundations of the current economic crisis. Offering a heterodox approach to interpretation it examines the policies implemented before and during the crisis, and the main institutions that shaped the model of advanced economies, particularly in the last two decades. The first part of the book provides a theoretical analysis of the crisis. The roots of the ‘great recession’ are divided into fundamentals with origins in financial liberalisation, financial innovation and income distribution, and complementary or contributory factors such as the international imbalances, the monetary policy,and the role of credit rating agencies. Part II suggests various paths to recovery while emphasising that it will be necessary to develop alternative strategies for sustainable economic recovery and growth. These strategies will require genuine political support and a new 'great European vision' to address major issues concerning the EU such as unemployment, structural regional differences and federalism. Drawing on various schools of thought, this book explains the complexities of the crisis through a wider evolutionary-institutional and heterodox framework.

Capitalism
Capitalism

Author: Anwar Shaikh

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-01-15

Total Pages: 1019

ISBN-13: 0199390657

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Orthodox economics operates within a hypothesized world of perfect competition in which perfect consumers and firms act to bring about supposedly optimal outcomes. The discrepancies between this model and the reality it claims to address are then attributed to particular imperfections in reality itself. Most heterodox economists seize on this fact and insist that the world is characterized by imperfect competition. But this only ties them to the notion of perfect competition, which remains as their point of departure and base of comparison. There is no imperfection without perfection. In Capitalism, Anwar Shaikh takes a different approach. He demonstrates that most of the central propositions of economic analysis can be derived without any reference to standard devices such as hyperrationality, optimization, perfect competition, perfect information, representative agents, or so-called rational expectations. This perspective allows him to look afresh at virtually all the elements of economic analysis: the laws of demand and supply, the determination of wage and profit rates, technological change, relative prices, interest rates, bond and equity prices, exchange rates, terms and balance of trade, growth, unemployment, inflation, and long booms culminating in recurrent general crises. In every case, Shaikh's innovative theory is applied to modern empirical patterns and contrasted with neoclassical, Keynesian, and Post-Keynesian approaches to the same issues. Shaikh's object of analysis is the economics of capitalism, and he explores the subject in this expansive light. This is how the classical economists, as well as Keynes and Kalecki, approached the issue. Anyone interested in capitalism and economics in general can gain a wealth of knowledge from this ground-breaking text.

Economics After the Crisis
Economics After the Crisis

Author: Irene van Staveren

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-12-05

Total Pages: 459

ISBN-13: 1317743091

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Economics After the Crisis is an introductory economics textbook, covering key topics in micro and macro economics. However, this book differs from other introductory economics textbooks in the perspective it takes, and it incorporates issues that are presently underserved by existing textbooks on the market. This book offers an introduction to economics that takes into account criticisms of the orthodox approach, and which acknowledges the role that this largely Western approach has played in the current global financial and economic crisis. A key feature of the book is its global approach: it offers examples from countries all over the world, including from developing and emerging economies. The chapters discuss all major economic topics, including individuals and households; the behaviour of consumers; the behaviour of firms; markets; the role of the state; public goods and commons; labour markets; capital markets; the macroeconomic flow; economic growth; international trade; nature and environmental externalities; poverty and wellbeing. Throughout, the book presents theoretical perspectives in which social structures, relatedness, uncertainty, and social norms provide key economic explanations, contrasting these with the idealized worldview of neoclassical economics. Economics After the Crisis is designed for a one-semester introductory course in economics, primarily at undergraduate but also at postgraduate level, and is suitable for students from a range of disciplines. It will be of particular relevance to those students with an interest in developing economies. https://www.coursera.org/learn/economicsfromapluralistperspective

Crisis and the Failure of Economic Theory
Crisis and the Failure of Economic Theory

Author: Giancarlo Bertocco

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2017-03-31

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 1785365355

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Economists have rightly been criticized for not having foreseen the crisis that exploded in 2007–2008. As Giancarlo Bertocco eloquently argues, responsibility does indeed rest heavily on their shoulders. By developing a theory which excluded the possibility that a catastrophic crisis could ever happen, the economics profession has justified decisions and behaviours that caused the Great Recession. This book presents an alternative theoretical approach built on the lessons of Marx, Keynes, Schumpeter, Kalecki, Kaldor and Minsky, which highlights the structural instability of a capitalist economy and the endogenous nature of the current crisis.

The Empire of Value
The Empire of Value

Author: Andre Orlean

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2023-10-31

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 0262549581

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An argument that conceiving of economic value as a social force makes it possible to develop a new and more powerful theory of market behavior. With the advent of the 2007–2008 financial crisis, the economics profession itself entered into a crisis of legitimacy from which it has yet to emerge. Despite the obviousness of their failures, however, economists continue to rely on the same methods and to proceed from the same underlying assumptions. André Orléan challenges the neoclassical paradigm in this book, with a new way of thinking about perhaps its most fundamental concept, economic value. Orléan argues that value is not bound up with labor, or utility, or any other property that preexists market exchange. Economic value, he contends, is a social force whose vast sphere of influence, amounting to a kind of empire, extends to every aspect of economic life. Markets are based on the identification of value with money, and exchange value can only be regarded as a social institution. Financial markets, for example, instead of defining an extrinsic, objective value for securities, act as a mechanism for arriving at a reference price that will be accepted by all investors. What economists must therefore study, Orléan urges, is the hold that value has over individuals and how it shapes their perceptions and behavior. Awarded the prestigious Prix Paul Ricoeur on its original publication in France in 2011, The Empire of Value has been substantially revised and enlarged for this edition, with an entirely new section discussing the financial crisis of 2007–2008.