Download or read book A Structuralist Theory of Economics written by Adolfo García de la Sienra and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economists have long grappled with the problem of how economic theories relate to empirical evidence: how can abstract mathematized theories be used to produce empirical claims? How are such theories applied to economic phenomena? What does it mean to “test” economic theories? This book introduces, explains, and develops a structural philosophy of economics which addresses these questions and provides a unifying philosophical/logical basis for a general methodology of economics. The book begins by introducing a rigorous view of the logical foundations and structure of scientific theories based upon the work of Alfred Tarski, Patrick Suppes, Karl Marx, and others. Using and combining their methods, the book then goes on to reconstruct important economic theories – including utility theory, game theory, Marxian economics, Sraffian economic theory, and econometrics – proving all the main theorems and discussing the key claims and the empirical applicability of each theory. Through these discussions, this book presents, in a systematic fashion, a general philosophy of economics grounded in the structural view. Offering rigorous formulations of important economic theories, A Structuralist Theory of Economics will be invaluable to all readers interested in the logic, philosophy, and methodology of economics. It will also appeal particularly to those interested in economic theory.

Download or read book A Structuralist Theory of Economics written by Adolfo García de la Sienra and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economists have long grappled with the problem of how economic theories relate to empirical evidence: how can abstract mathematized theories be used to produce empirical claims? How are such theories applied to economic phenomena? What does it mean to “test” economic theories? This book introduces, explains, and develops a structural philosophy of economics which addresses these questions and provides a unifying philosophical/logical basis for a general methodology of economics. The book begins by introducing a rigorous view of the logical foundations and structure of scientific theories based upon the work of Alfred Tarski, Patrick Suppes, Karl Marx, and others. Using and combining their methods, the book then goes on to reconstruct important economic theories – including utility theory, game theory, Marxian economics, Sraffian economic theory, and econometrics – proving all the main theorems and discussing the key claims and the empirical applicability of each theory. Through these discussions, this book presents, in a systematic fashion, a general philosophy of economics grounded in the structural view. Offering rigorous formulations of important economic theories, A Structuralist Theory of Economics will be invaluable to all readers interested in the logic, philosophy, and methodology of economics. It will also appeal particularly to those interested in economic theory.

Download or read book New Structural Economics written by Justin Yifu Lin and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an innovative framework to analyze the process of industrial upgrading and diversification, a key feature of economic development. Based on this framework, it provides concrete advice to development practitioners and policy makers on how to unleash a country's growth potential.

Download or read book Structural Economic Dynamics written by Luigi Pasinetti and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-11-02 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a theoretical investigation of the influence of human learning on the development through time of a 'pure labour' economy. The theory proposed is a simple one, but aims to grasp the essential features of all industrial economies. Economists have long known that two basic phenomena lie at the root of long-term economic movements in industrial societies: capital accumulation and technical progress. Attention has been concentrated on the former. In this book, by contrast, technical progress is assigned the central role. Within a multi-sector framework, the author examines the structural dynamics of prices, production and employment (implied by differentiated rates of productivity growth and expansion of demand) against a background of 'natural' relations. He also considers a number of institutional problems. Institutional and social learning, know-how, and the diffusion of knowledge emerge as the decisive factors accounting for the success and failure of industrial societies.

Download or read book Reconstructing Macroeconomics written by Lance TAYLOR and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Macroeconomics is in disarray. No one approach is dominant, and an increasing divide between theory and empirics is evident. This book presents both a critique of mainstream macroeconomics from a structuralist perspective and an exposition of modern structuralist approaches. The fundamental assumption of structuralism is that it is impossible to understand a macroeconomy without understanding its major institutions and distributive relationships across productive sectors and social groups. Lance Taylor focuses his critique on mainstream monetarist, new classical, new Keynesian, and growth models. He examines them from a historical perspective, tracing monetarism from its eighteenth-century roots and comparing current monetarist and new classical models with those of the post-Wicksellian, pre-Keynesian generation of macroeconomists. He contrasts the new Keynesian vision with Keynes's General Theory, and analyzes contemporary growth theories against long traditions of thought about economic development and structural change. Table of Contents: Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Social Accounts and Social Relations 1. A Simple Social Accounting Matrix 2. Implications of the Accounts 3. Disaggregating Effective Demand 4. A More Realistic SAM 5. Stock-Flow Relationships 6. A SAM and Asset Accounts for the United States 7. Further Thoughts 2. Prices and Distribution 1. Classical Macroeconomics 2. Classical Theories of Price and Distribution 3. Neoclassical Cost-Based Prices 4. Hat Calculus, Measuring Productivity Growth, and Full Employment Equilibrium 5. Mark-up Pricing in the Product Market 6. Efficiency Wages for Labor 7. New Keynesian Crosses and Methodological Reservations 8. First Looks at Inflation 3. Money, Interest, and Inflation 1. Money and Credit 2. Diverse Interest Theories 3. Interest Rate Cost-Push 4. Real Interest Rate Theory 5. The Ramsey Model 6. Dynamics on a Flying Trapeze 7. The Overlapping Generations Growth Model 8. Wicksell's Cumulative Process Inflation Model 9. More on Inflation Taxes 4. Effective Demand and Its Real and Financial Implications 1. The Commodity Market 2. Macro Adjustment via Forced Saving and Real Balance Effects 3. Real Balances, Input Substitution, and Money Wage Cuts 4. Liquidity Preference and Marginal Efficiency of Capital 5. Liquidity Preference, Fisher Arbitrage, and the Liquidity Trap 6. The System as a Whole 7. The IS/LM Model 8. Keynes and Friends on Financial Markets 9. Financial Markets and Investment 10. Consumption and Saving 11 "Disequilibrium" Macroeconomics 12. A Structuralist Synopsis 5. Short-Term Model Closure and Long-Term Growth 1. Model "Closures" in the Short Run 2. Graphical Representations and Supply-Driven Growth 3. Harrod, Robinson, and Related Stories 4. More Stable Demand-Determined Growth 6. Chicago Monetarism, New Classical Macroeconomics, and Mainstream Finance 1. Methodological Caveats 2. A Chicago Monetarist Model 3. A Cleaner Version of Monetarism 4. New Classical Spins 5. Dynamics of Government Debt 6. Ricardian Equivalence 7. The Business Cycle Conundrum 8. Cycles from the Supply Side 9. Optimal Behavior under Risk 10. Random Walk, Equity Premium, and the Modigliani-Miller Theorem 11. More on Modigliani-Miller 12. The Calculation Debate and Super-Rational Economics 7. Effective Demand and the Distributive Curve 1. Initial Observations 2. Inflation, Productivity Growth, and Distribution 3. Absorbing Productivity Growth 4. Effects of Expansionary Policy 5. Financial Extensions 6. Dynamics of the System 7. Comparative Dynamics 8. Open Economy Complications 8. Structuralist Finance and Money 1. Banking History and Institutions 2. Endogenous Finance 3. Endogenous Money via Bank Lending 4. Money Market Funds and the Level of Interest Rates 5. Business Debt and Growth in a Post-Keynesian World 6. New Keynesian Approaches to Financial Markets 9. A Genus of Cycles 1. Goodwin's Model 2. A Structuralist Goodwin Model 3. Evidence for the United States 4. A Contractionary Devaluation Cycle 5. An Inflation Expectations Cycle 6. Confidence and Multiplier 7. Minsky on Financial Cycles 8. Excess Capacity, Corporate Debt Burden, and a Cold Douche 9. Final Thoughts 10. Exchange Rate Complications 1. Accounting Conundrums 2. Determining Exchange Rates 3. Asset Prices, Expectations, and Exchange Rates 4. Commodity Arbitrage and Purchasing Power Parity 5. Portfolio Balance 6. Mundell-Fleming 7. IS/LM Comparative Statics 8. UIP and Dynamics 9. Open Economy Monetarism 10. Dornbusch 11. Other Theories of the Exchange Rate 12. A Developing Country Debt Cycle 13. Fencing in the Beast 11. Growth and Development Theories 1. New Growth Theories and Say's Law 2. Distribution and Growth 3. Models with Binding Resource or Sectoral Supply Constraints 4. Accounting for Growth 5. Other Perspectives 6. The Mainstream Policy Response 7. Where Theory Might Sensibly Go References Index Reconstructing Macroeconomics is a stunning intellectual achievement. It surveys an astonishing range of macroeconomic problems and approaches in a compact, coherent critical framework with unfailing depth, wit, and subtlety. Lance Taylor's pathbreaking work in structural macroeconomics and econometrics sets challenging standards of rigor, realism, and insight for the field. Taylor shows why the structuralist and Keynesian insistence on putting accounting consistency, income distribution, and aggregate demand at the center of macroeconomic analysis is indispensable to understanding real-world macroeconomic events in both developing and developed economies. The book is full of new results, modeling techniques, and shrewd suggestions for further research. Taylor's scrupulous and balanced appraisal of the whole range of macroeconomic schools of thought will be a source of new perspectives to macroeconomists of every persuasion. --Duncan K. Foley, New School University Lance Taylor has produced a masterful and comprehensive critical survey of existing macro models, both mainstream and structuralist, which breaks considerable new ground. The pace is brisk, the level is high, and the writing is entertaining. The author's sense of humor and literary references enliven the discussion of otherwise arcane and technical, but extremely important, issues in macro theory. This book is sure to become a standard reference that future generations of macroeconomists will refer to for decades to come. --Robert Blecker, American University While there are other books dealing with heterodox macroeconomics, this book surpasses them all in the quality of its presentation and in the careful treatment and criticism of orthodox macroeconomics including its recent contributions. The book is unique in the way it systematically covers heterodox growth theory and its relations to other aspects of heterodox macroeconomics using a common organizing framework in terms of accounting relations, and in the way it compares the theories with mainstream contributions. Another positive and novel feature of the book is that it takes a long view of the development of economic ideas, which leads to a more accurate appreciation of the real contributions by recent theoretical developments than is possible in a presentation that ignores the history of macroeconomics. --Amitava Dutt, University of Notre Dame

Download or read book Structural Holes written by Ronald S. Burt and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ronald Burt describes the social structural theory of competition that has developed through the last two decades. The contrast between perfect competition and monopoly is replaced with a network model of competition. The basic element in this account is the structural hole: a gap between two individuals with complementary resources or information. When the two are connected through a third individual as entrepreneur, the gap is filled, creating important advantages for the entrepreneur. Competitive advantage is a matter of access to structural holes in relation to market transactions.

Download or read book Structural Analysis and the Process of Economic Development written by Jonas Ljungberg and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-05 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economic development is full of discontinuities. Mainstream economists perceive these as external disturbances to a natural state of equilibrium, but this book argues that much of the discontinuities are part of economic development, suggesting that patterns can be understood with structural analysis. Structural Analysis and the Process of Economic Development presents a detailed analysis of the trajectory of Swedish economic change since the nineteenth century. The emergence of structural analysis in economic research is reviewed, as well as a chapter devoted to development blocks, a key concept that was outlined in the 1940s and that has much in common with the more recent notions ‘techno-economic paradigms’ and ‘general-purpose technologies’. Structural analysis and the major contributions by Schön are introduced in this book. Also highlighted is Sweden’s integration into the international economy via the nineteenth century capital markets, along with structural analysis as a tool for understanding climate change. The recent technique of wavelet analysis and its potential for structural analysis is demonstrated in a non-technical chapter. This book is suitable for those who are interested in and study political economy, economic history and European history.

Download or read book Problems of the Modern Economy written by Edward C. Budd and published by W. W. Norton. This book was released on 1966-10 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Structural Transformation of Bangladesh Economy written by Mustafa K. Mujeri and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-03-18 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the theory and global evidence on structural transformation along with stylised facts and implications using, among others, a dynamic panel model, for South Asia. The characteristics of the structural transformation process in Bangladesh bring out the relevance of a comprehensive and inclusive South Asian ‘brand’ in view of the challenges of large population size, high burden of poverty, rising inequalities and its compulsion to achieve rapid and sustained inclusive development. The analysis highlights several distinct characteristics of Bangladesh’s structural transformation including changes in value added, trade, employment, productivity, formal-informal jobs, and opportunities for low-skilled workers. The book suggests that the manufacturing sector could not create the required number of jobs and generate rapid absolute and relative productivity gains in the Bangladesh economy. Although the services sector has largely led output and employment growth, services subsectors with strong labour absorptive capacity have low average productivity. Hence, growth-enhancing structural transformation led by these subsectors is likely to be less dynamic than required for rapid employment-creating growth in the economy. The book’s analysis on COVID-19 and cyclone Amphan shows that an integrated disaster and development paradigm is needed for Bangladesh. An inclusive and health and well-being focused structural transformation presents the pathway to advance the people-centred approach to development in Bangladesh through both vulnerability reduction and investments in sustainable development that would offset both known and unknown disaster threats. The key for Bangladesh is to skillfully manage the ‘developer’s dilemma’ of achieving both structural transformation in terms of large productivity gains and inclusive growth for reducing poverty and rising inequalities. This book is relevant to students, academicians and development practitioners and others interested in contemporary development.

Download or read book Structural Change and Economic Growth written by Luigi L. Pasinetti and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1981-04-16 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents an original theoretical treatment of the problems of maintaining full employment in a multisector economic system

Download or read book An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change written by Richard R. Nelson and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1985-10-15 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contains the most sustained and serious attack on mainstream, neoclassical economics in more than forty years. Nelson and Winter focus their critique on the basic question of how firms and industries change overtime. They marshal significant objections to the fundamental neoclassical assumptions of profit maximization and market equilibrium, which they find ineffective in the analysis of technological innovation and the dynamics of competition among firms. To replace these assumptions, they borrow from biology the concept of natural selection to construct a precise and detailed evolutionary theory of business behavior. They grant that films are motivated by profit and engage in search for ways of improving profits, but they do not consider them to be profit maximizing. Likewise, they emphasize the tendency for the more profitable firms to drive the less profitable ones out of business, but they do not focus their analysis on hypothetical states of industry equilibrium. The results of their new paradigm and analytical framework are impressive. Not only have they been able to develop more coherent and powerful models of competitive firm dynamics under conditions of growth and technological change, but their approach is compatible with findings in psychology and other social sciences. Finally, their work has important implications for welfare economics and for government policy toward industry.

Download or read book Structuralist Macroeconomics written by Lance Taylor and published by . This book was released on 1983-05-03 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The structuralist perspective; Adjustment mechanisms - the real side; Adjustment mechanisms - two sector models; Short-run adjustment in practice; Money and other assets in the short run; Money, inflation, and growth; Trade balance complications; Foreign assets and the balance of payments; Two sector models of inflation, distribution and growth; Trade patterns and southern growth; Policy lessons.

Download or read book The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money written by John Maynard Keynes and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-07-20 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book was originally published by Macmillan in 1936. It was voted the top Academic Book that Shaped Modern Britain by Academic Book Week (UK) in 2017, and in 2011 was placed on Time Magazine's top 100 non-fiction books written in English since 1923. Reissued with a fresh Introduction by the Nobel-prize winner Paul Krugman and a new Afterword by Keynes’ biographer Robert Skidelsky, this important work is made available to a new generation. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money transformed economics and changed the face of modern macroeconomics. Keynes’ argument is based on the idea that the level of employment is not determined by the price of labour, but by the spending of money. It gave way to an entirely new approach where employment, inflation and the market economy are concerned. Highly provocative at its time of publication, this book and Keynes’ theories continue to remain the subject of much support and praise, criticism and debate. Economists at any stage in their career will enjoy revisiting this treatise and observing the relevance of Keynes’ work in today’s contemporary climate.

Download or read book Capitalism written by Anwar Shaikh and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-15 with total page 896 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Structural Slumps written by Edmund S. Phelps and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dissatisfied with the explanations of the business cycle provided by the Keynesian, monetarist, New Keynesian, and real business cycle schools, Edmund Phelps has developed from various existing strands-some modern and some classical--a radically different theory to account for the long periods of unemployment that have dogged the economies of the United States and Western Europe since the early 1970s. Phelps sees secular shifts and long swings of the unemployment rate as structural in nature. That is, they are typically the result of movements in the natural rate of unemployment (to which the equilibrium path is always tending) rather than of long-persisting deviations around a natural rate itself impervious to changing structure. What has been lacking is a "structuralist" theory of how the natural rate is disturbed by real demand and supply shocks, foreign and domestic, and the adjustments they set in motion. To study the determination of the natural rate path, Phelps constructs three stylized general equilibrium models, each one built around a distinct kind of asset in which firms invest and which is important for the hiring decision. An element of these models is the modern economics of the labor market whereby firms, in seeking to dampen their employees' propensities to quit and shirk, drive wages above market-clearing levels-the phenomenon of the "incentive wage"--and so generate involuntary unemployment in labor-market equilibrium. Another element is the capital market, where interest rates are disturbed by demand and supply shocks such as shifts in profitability, thrift, productivity, and the rate of technical progress and population increase. A general-equilibrium analysis shows how various real shocks, operating through interest rates upon the demand for employees and through the propensity to quit and shirk upon the incentive wage, act upon the natural rate (and thus equilibrium path). In an econometric and historical section, the new theory of economic activity is submitted to certain empirical tests against global postwar data. In the final section the author draws from the theory some suggestions for government policy measures that would best serve to combat structural slumps.

Download or read book The Economics of Innovation New Technologies and Structural Change written by Cristiano Antonelli and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ongoing process of revising and rethinking the foundations of economic theory leads to great complexities and contradictions at the heart of economics. ‘Economics of innovation’ provides a fertile challenge to standard economics, and one that can help it overcome its many criticisms. This authoritative book from Cristiano Antonelli provides a systematic account of recent advances in the economics of innovation. By integrating this account with the economics of technological change, this exceptional book elaborates an understanding of the effects of the introduction of new technologies. This excellent, comprehensive account from respected expert Antonelli will be much appreciated within the innovation economics community, yet it is also a book that should be read by all those with either a private or professional interest in economic theory.

Download or read book Contending Economic Theories written by Richard D. Wolff and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012-09-07 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A systematic comparison of the 3 major economic theories—neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian—showing how they differ and why these differences matter in shaping economic theory and practice. Contending Economic Theories offers a unique comparative treatment of the three main theories in economics as it is taught today: neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian. Each is developed and discussed in its own chapter, yet also differentiated from and compared to the other two theories. The authors identify each theory's starting point, its goals and foci, and its internal logic. They connect their comparative theory analysis to the larger policy issues that divide the rival camps of theorists around such central issues as the role government should play in the economy and the class structure of production, stressing the different analytical, policy, and social decisions that flow from each theory's conceptualization of economics. Building on their earlier book Economics: Marxian versus Neoclassical, the authors offer an expanded treatment of Keynesian economics and a comprehensive introduction to Marxian economics, including its class analysis of society. Beyond providing a systematic explanation of the logic and structure of standard neoclassical theory, they analyze recent extensions and developments of that theory around such topics as market imperfections, information economics, new theories of equilibrium, and behavioral economics, considering whether these advances represent new paradigms or merely adjustments to the standard theory. They also explain why economic reasoning has varied among these three approaches throughout the twentieth century, and why this variation continues today—as neoclassical views give way to new Keynesian approaches in the wake of the economic collapse of 2008.