In this thought-provoking collection, ten international scholars offer reflections and new interpretations of Walras’ and Pareto’s unique contributions to topics including the importance of the social sciences, the development of modern microeconomics and econometrics, political economy and public choice, and political sociology. Their insights will interest researchers and scholars of economic history, political sociology, and the social sciences.
Why isn't the whole world as rich as the United States? Conventional views holds that differences in the share of output invested by countries account for this disparity. Not so, say Stephen Parente and Edward Prescott. In Barriers to Riches, Parente and Prescott argue that differences in Total Factor Productivity (TFP) explain this phenomenon. These differences exist because some countries erect barriers to the efficient use of readily available technology. The purpose of these barriers is to protect industry insiders with vested interests in current production processes from outside competition. Were this protection stopped, rapid TFP growth would follow in the poor countries, and the whole world would soon be rich. Barriers to Riches reflects a decade of research by the authors on this question. Like other books on the subject, it makes use of historical examples and industry studies to illuminate potential explanations for income differences. Unlike these other books, however, it uses aggregate data and general equilibrium models to evaluate the plausibility of alternative explanations. The result of this approach is the most complete and coherent treatment of the subject to date.
Historians of social science will benefit from the detailed examination of how economics expanded into new areas like the environment. Environmental historians will benefit from an understanding of how economics claimed to be 'on the side' of the environment. Environmental economists will benefit from the contextualization of their field.
Bridel (economics, U. of Lausanne, Switzerland) reconstructs the pioneering attempts of Leon Walras (1834-1910) and Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) to coordinate money and general equilibrium theory. He argues that the very logic of the original static general equilibrium model excludes the integration of monetary and value theory, shows how money is prevented from playing its essential role as a social institution in allowing monetary exchanges between individuals, and calls for some radical re- thinking about the theoretical construction on which much modern economic theory is based. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
An analysis of how the increasing polarization of American politics has been accompanied and accelerated by greater income inequality, rising immigration, and other social and economic changes.
In his fourth edition of Éléménts d'économie politique pure (1900), León Walras introduced the device of written pledges to eliminate path dependency: sellers of products and services write out commitments to supply certain quantities at suggested prices with no commodities actually produced and supplied until a set of prices is found at which supply and demand are equal simultaneously in every market. This brought about very serious alterations to the character of the book. Unfortunately, these changes resulted in an incomplete, internally contradictory, and occasionally incoherent text. This translation, therefore, by two leading scholars of León Walras' work, Donald A. Walker and Jan van Daal, revisits the third edition of this seminal work, including Walras' brilliant explanation of his comprehensive model, with all its richness derived from reality. Growing research into Walras' work indicates that it was this third edition that contained his best theoretical research and a translation of this edition of the book is now a necessity.
The Prudential Regulation of Banks applies modern economic theory to prudential regulation of financial intermediaries. Dewatripont and Tirole tackle the key problem of providing the right incentives to management in banks by looking at how external intervention by claimholders (holders of equity or debt) affects managerial incentives and how that intervention might ideally be implemented. Their primary focus is the regulation of commercial banks and S&Ls, but many of the implications of their theory are also valid for other intermediaries such as insurance companies, pension funds, and securities funds. Observing that the main concern of the regulation of intermediaries is solvency (the relation between equity, debt, and asset riskiness), the authors provide institutional background and develop a case for regulation as performing the monitoring functions (screening, auditing, convenant writing, and intervention) that dispersed depositors are unable or unwilling to perform. They also illustrate the dangers of regulatory failure in a summary of the S&L crisis of the 1980s. Following a survey of banking theory, Dewatripont and Tirole develop their model of the capital structure of banks and show how optimal regulation can be achieved using capital adequacy requirements and external intervention when banks are violated. They explain how regulation can be designed to minimize risks of accounting manipulations and to insulate bank managers from macroeconomic shocks, which are beyond their control. Finally, they provide a detailed evaluation of the existing regulation and of potential alternatives, such as rating agencies, private deposit insurance, and large private depositors. They show that these reforms are, at best, a complement, rather than a substitute, to the existing regulation which combines capital ratios with external intervention in case of insolvency. The Prudential Regulation of Banks is part of the Walras Pareto Lectures, from the Universiy of Lausanne.
Government regulation is ubiquitous today in rich and middle-income countries--present in areas that range from workplace conditions to food processing to school curricula--although standard economic theories predict that it should be rather uncommon. In this book, Andrei Shleifer argues that the ubiquity of regulation can be explained not so much by the failure of markets as by the failure of courts to solve contract and tort disputes cheaply, predictably, and impartially. When courts are expensive, unpredictable, and biased, the public will seek alternatives to dispute resolution. The form this alternative has taken throughout the world is regulation. The Failure of Judges and the Rise of Regulators gathers Shleifer's influential writings on regulation and adds to them a substantial introductory essay in which Shleifer critiques the standard theories of economic regulation and proposes "the Enforcement Theory of Regulation," which sees regulation as the more efficient strategy for social control of business. Subsequent chapters present the theoretical and empirical case against the efficiency of courts, make the historical and theoretical case for the comparative efficiency of regulation, and offer two empirical studies suggesting circumstances in which regulation might emerge as an efficient solution to social problems. Shleifer does not offer an unconditional endorsement of regulation and its expansion but rather argues that it is better than its alternatives, particularly litigation.
