Kenneth Boulding was a prolific writer across so many different fields that not only is he often much referred to and cited, he is considered a core member of many of these fields. Boulding is the quintessential interdisciplinary scholar. He died in 1993, but he has left a legacy in economics, conflict studies, systems theory, ecology, biology, communication studies, and ethics. As an economist proper he has tested and expanded the boundaries of that field without unduly "invading" and undermining the expertise and established knowledge of the other social sciences. This proposed volume will allow scholars who have worked or are starting to work in areas that Boulding has initiated, established and made a continued contribution to, to understand the links between these fields and other related ones. The volume will establish a source of inspiration for some time to come.
Kenneth Boulding was a prolific writer across so many different fields that not only is he often much referred to and cited, he is considered a core member of many of these fields. Boulding is the quintessential interdisciplinary scholar. He died in 1993, but he has left a legacy in economics, conflict studies, systems theory, ecology, biology, communication studies, and ethics. As an economist proper he has tested and expanded the boundaries of that field without unduly "invading" and undermining the expertise and established knowledge of the other social sciences. This proposed volume will allow scholars who have worked or are starting to work in areas that Boulding has initiated, established and made a continued contribution to, to understand the links between these fields and other related ones. The volume will establish a source of inspiration for some time to come.
Law and Economics is an established field of research and arguably one of the few examples of a successful interdisciplinary project. This book explores whether, or to what extent, that interdisciplinarity has indeed been a success. It provides insights on the foundations and methods, achievements and challenges of Law and Economics, at a time when both the continuing criticism of academic economics and the growth of empirical legal studies raise questions about the identity and possible further developments of the project. Through a combination of reflections on long-term trends and detailed case studies, contributors to this volume analyse the institutional and epistemic character of Law and Economics, which develops through an exchange of concepts, models and practices between economics and legal scholarship. Inspired by insights from the philosophy of the social sciences, the book shows how concepts travel between legal scholarship and economics and change meanings when applied elsewhere, how economic theories and models inform, and transform, judicial practice, and it addresses whether the transfers of knowledge between economics and law are symmetrical exchanges between the two disciplines.
Since the Middle Ages, literature has portrayed the economic world in poetry, drama, stories and novels. The complexity of human realities highlights crucial aspects of the economy. The nexus linking characters to their economic environment is central in a new genre, the "economic novel", that puts forth economic choices and events to narrate social behavior, individual desires, and even non-economic decisions. For many authors, literary narration also offers a means to express critical viewpoints about economic development, for example in regards to its ecological or social ramifications. Conflicts of economic interest have social, political and moral causes and consequences. This book shows how economic and literary texts deal with similar subjects, and explores the ways in which economic ideas and metaphors shape literary texts, focusing on the analogies between economic theories and narrative structure in literature and drama. This volume also suggests that connecting literature and economics can help us find a common language to voice new, critical perspectives on crises and social change. Written by an impressive array of experts in their fields, Economics and Literature is an important read for those who study history of economic thought, economic theory and philosophy, as well as literary and critical theory.
An introductory overview of the methods, models and interdisciplinary links of artificial economics. Addresses the differences between the assumptions and methods of artificial economics and those of mainstream economics. This is one of the first books to fully address, in an intuitive and conceptual form, this new way of doing economics.
This interdisciplinary book argues that the economy has an underlying non-linear structure and that business cycles are endogenous, which allows a greater explanatory power with respect to the traditional assumption that dynamics are stochastic and shocks are exogenous. The first part of this work is formal-methodological and provides the mathematical background needed for the remainder, while the second part presents the view that signal processing involves construction and deconstruction of information and that the efficacy of this process can be measured. The third part focuses on economics and provides the related background and literature on economic dynamics and the fourth part is devoted to new perspectives in understanding nonlinearities in economic dynamics: growth and cycles. By pursuing this approach, the book seeks to (1) determine whether, and if so where, common features exist, (2) discover some hidden features of economic dynamics, and (3) highlight specific indicators of structural changes in time series. Accordingly, it is a must read for everyone interested in a better understanding of economic dynamics, business cycles, econometrics and complex systems, as well as non-linear dynamics and chaos theory.
The global financial crisis and subsequent increase in social inequality has led in many cases to a redrawing of the boundaries between formal and informal work. This interdisciplinary volume explores the role of informal work in today’s global economy, presenting economic, legal, sociological, historical, anthropological, political and cultural perspectives on the topic. Workers and the Global Informal Economy explores varying definitions of informality in the backdrop of neo-liberal market logic, exploring how it manifests itself in different regions around the world, and its relationship with formal work. This volume demonstrates how neo-liberalism has been instrumental in accelerating informality and has resulted in the increasingly precarious position of the informal worker. Using different methodological approaches and regional focuses, this book considers key questions such as whether workers exercise choice over their work; how constrained such choices are; how social norms shape such choices; how work affects their well-being and agency; and what role culture plays in the determination of informality. This interdisciplinary collection will be of interest to policy-makers and researchers engaging with informality from different disciplinary and regional perspectives.
This edited book is a compilation of research studies conducted in the areas of business, management and economics. These cutting-edge articles will be of interest to researchers, academics, and business managers.
This volume is an excellent outcome of an American Economic Association Committee for Economic Education project aimed at advancing the teaching of economics within a liberal arts context. Dave Colander and KimMarie McGoldrick assembled a most able panel of contributors for this effort that includes dialogue on what should be taught, how it should be taught, and how that teaching and learning should be assessed and rewarded. To the editors credit, they have not attempted to dictate policy but to stimulate debate on the topics. This volume is a must read for anyone seriously interested in the teaching of economics at the tertiary level. William E. Becker, Indiana University, Bloomington, US The economics major is a central part of a college education. But is that economics major doing what it is meant to do? And if not, how should it be changed? This book raises a set of provocative questions that encourage readers to look at the economics major in a different light than it is typically considered and provides a series of recommendations for change. Responding to a Teagle Foundation initiative on the role of majors in higher education, the contributors eminent economists and administrators consider the relationship between the goals and objectives of the economics major and those of a liberal education. They address questions such as: What is the appropriate training for a person who will be teaching in a liberal arts school? What incentives would motivate the creation of institutional value through teaching and not simply research? They also explore whether the disciplinary nature of undergraduate education is squeezing out the big-think questions, and replacing them with little-think questions, and whether we should change graduate training of economists to better prepare them to be teachers, rather than researchers. Providing a stimulating discussion of the economics major by many of the leaders in US economic education, this book will prove a thought provoking read for those with a special interest in economics and economics education, particularly academics, lecturers, course administrators, students and researchers.
Discusses a series of orthodox and heterodox economic, sociological, and psychological approaches and analyses. Explains how orthodox economics has developed a so-called economic world, and constructs a methodologically comparable sociological and psychological world.
