ORIGINS OF INCREASING RETURNS Nobel Laureate Theodore W.Schultz has made highly important contributions to the fields of agriculture and natural resource economics, and to human capital theory. This is the second of two volumes which encompass and combine the passions and interests of this eminent economist. Origins of Increasing Returns is mainly devoted to investments in specialized forms of capital, consisting in large part of human capital that produce increasing rates. The resulting tensions between politics and economics are critically examined.
A unique feature of the book compared to classical monographs on GE is its emphasis on the historical nature of the subject, and not only the mathematical nature. Students are expected to learn that those mathematically formidable techniques are indeed necessary for tackling many economic problems which have been significant not only in the mathematical or technical context, but also in the historical and traditional context.
"What The Double Helix did for biology, David Warsh's Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations does for economics." —Boston Globe A stimulating and inviting tour of modern economics centered on the story of one of its most important breakthroughs. In 1980, the twenty-four-year-old graduate student Paul Romer tackled one of the oldest puzzles in economics. Eight years later he solved it. This book tells the story of what has come to be called the new growth theory: the paradox identified by Adam Smith more than two hundred years earlier, its disappearance and occasional resurfacing in the nineteenth century, the development of new technical tools in the twentieth century, and finally the student who could see further than his teachers. Fascinating in its own right, new growth theory helps to explain dominant first-mover firms like IBM or Microsoft, underscores the value of intellectual property, and provides essential advice to those concerned with the expansion of the economy. Like James Gleick's Chaos or Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe, this revealing book takes us to the frontlines of scientific research; not since Robert Heilbroner's classic work The Worldly Philosophers have we had as attractive a glimpse of the essential science of economics.
A crucial question in contemporary economics concerns where economic activities will locate and relocate themselves in the future. This comprehensive, innovative book applies an evolutionary framework to spatial economics, arguing against the prevailing neoclassical equilibrium model, providing important concrete and theoretical insights, and illuminating areas of future enquiry.
In recent decades, new endogenous growth theory has become popular but the ideas are not new. They go back at least as far as Adam Smith, and the subsequent contributions made notably by Alfred Marshall and Allyn Young. This book critically discusses and provides an historical perspective to the entire spectrum of endogenous growth theories starting with Adam Smith and ending with Paul Romer. It fills an important gap in the literature. While contributions of individual authors are readily available, there is no comprehensive study on the subject covering such a vast ground, critically discussing these authors in a comprehensive framework. It collates all the arguments and economic viewpoints in one collection, providing both the seasoned economist and a graduate economist with a critical comparison of origin, mechanisms, conclusions, and policy implications of these models.
Study of the progressive division of labor is a burgeoning industry in economics in recent years. Classical authors, dating back as early as 500 BC, have made insightful analyses on the determinants and implications of the division of labor. Unfortunately these writings are rather scattered and not readily accessible. This important book aims to fill this void, serving as a valuable source of reference for scholars interested in the economics of specialization.The volume begins with the precursors of political economy including the ancient Greeks, medieval Islamic scholastics and mercantilists, continues with the classical political economists and the neoclassicists, and concludes with the Austrian economists such as Hayek in the 1940s. It covers major themes and perspectives about the division of labor that have ever emerged in the discipline of the economic science, including the economics of increasing returns to specialization, the twin ideas of division of labor and the extent of the market, the theory of the spontaneous market order, coordination in the factory system and large scale manufactures, knowledge and the division of mental labor, integration of analyses of specialization into the neoclassical framework, etc.
