Download or read book The Cognitive Mechanics of Economic Development and Institutional Change written by Bertin Martens and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-02-05 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book seeks to explain long-term economic development and institutional change in terms of the cognitive features of human learning and communication processes. Martens links individual cognitive processes to macroeconomic growth theories, including economies of scale and scope, and to theories of institutional development based on asymmetric i

Download or read book Economic Growth and the High Wage Economy written by Morris Altman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-06-26 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a theoretical framework to better understand how firms, economies and labor markets have evolved. This is done in a reader-friendly fashion, without complex mathematical arguments and proofs. Economic Growth and the High Wage Economy shows how high wage economies help make firms and economies more productive and why high wage economies can be competitive even in an increasingly globalized environment. It also demonstrates why concerns that labor supply will dry up as wages increase and social benefits rise are largely based on impoverished economic reasoning. The first chapters provide a theoretical basis for the rest of the book, showing for instance how higher wages are prone to increasing the level of economic efficiency by getting people to work harder and smarter (mainly smarter). Altman also explains that our understanding of technological change can be markedly improved by modelling technological change as a product of higher wages and improved working conditions and other shocks to the economic system. As the book develops, it is shown that increasing and high levels of income inequality are not necessary for growth and development, because the economic ‘pie’ grows when the economic wellbeing of the lower half and even the middle improves. The evolution of the state can also be better understood by applying this analytical framework. So too can the persistence of inefficient systems of production and cultural traits that appear to be inconsistent with economic prosperity. On top of this, the book examines the implications of Altman’s theoretical framework for macroeconomic analysis and policy. Finally, it is shown that labor supply can be better understood by introducing target income into the analytical mix. The main contribution of this book is providing the theoretical underpinning for why relatively high wages and, moreover, competition with high wages is good for dynamic growth and development. This work establishes why an alternative model of labor supply, based on the notion and reality of target income, does a better job of explaining the evolution of labor supply. The latter also reinforces the view that increasing wage and workers’ benefits should not be expected to damage the economy, even in the realm of labor supply. This book will be of interest to public policy experts, trade unions, human rights experts and scholars of behavioural economics, labour economics and globalization.

Download or read book The Political Economy and Media Coverage of the European Economic Crisis written by Julien Mercille and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-08-27 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The European economic crisis has been ongoing since 2008 and while austerity has spread over the continent, it has failed to revive economies. The media have played an important ideological role in presenting the policies of economic and political elites in a favourable light, even if the latter’s aim has been to shift the burden of adjustment onto citizens. This book explains how and why, using a critical political economic perspective and focusing on the case of Ireland. Throughout, Ireland is compared with contemporary and historical examples to contextualise the arguments made. The book covers the housing bubble that led to the crash, the rescue of financial institutions by the state, the role of the European institutions and the International Monetary Fund, austerity, and the possibility of leaving the eurozone for Europe’s peripheral countries. Through a systematic analysis of Ireland’s main newspapers, it is argued that the media reflect elite views and interests and downplay alternative policies that could lead to more progressive responses to the crisis.

Download or read book Computable Constructive and Behavioural Economic Dynamics written by Stefano Zambelli and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-02-25 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book contains thirty original articles dealing with important aspects of theoretical as well as applied economic theory. While the principal focus is on: the computational and algorithmic nature of economic dynamics; individual as well as collective decision process and rational behavior, some contributions emphasize also the importance of classical recursion theory and constructive mathematics for dynamical systems, business cycles theories, growth theories, and others are in the area of history of thought, methodology and behavioural economics. The contributors range from Nobel Laureates to the promising new generation of innovative thinkers. This volume is also a Festschrift in honour of Professor Kumaraswamy Vela Velupillai, the founder of Computable Economics, a growing field of research where important results stemming from classical recursion theory and constructive mathematics are applied to economic theory. The aim and hope is to provide new tools for economic modelling. This book will be of particular appeal to postgraduate students and scholars in one or more of the following fields: computable economics, business cycles, macroeconomics, growth theories, methodology, behavioural economics, financial economics, experimental and agent based economics. It might be also of importance to those interested on the general theme of algorithmic foundations for social sciences.

Download or read book Capital Exploitation and Economic Crisis written by John Weeks and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2008 the capitalist world was swept by the severest crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Mainstream economics neither anticipated nor could account for this disastrous financial crisis, which required massive state intervention throughout the capitalist world. Karl Marx did anticipate this type of financial collapse, arguing that it was derivative from the ‘fetishism of commodities’ inherent in the capitalist mode of production. This book substantiates the foregoing claim by a journey from Marx’s analysis of commodities to the capitalist crisis of the twenty-first century. The book demonstrates that Marx's framework (1) demonstrates that capitalism is but one historical form of class society among many; (2) explains the transition from pre-capitalist to capitalist society; (3) reveals the concrete operation of a capitalist economy; and (4) shows why others would explain the capitalist economy in alternative theoretical frameworks. The central element in his framework from which all else derives is ‘the theory of value’. This book is not an exercise in the history of thought. It is an attempt to analyze the nature of contemporary capitalist society. While Marx’s analysis of capitalism has implications for political action, these need not lead one to embrace revolution in place of reform, though it can and has provided the analytical foundation for both. Marx’s analysis of capitalism is a coherent whole, and meaningful insights cannot be obtained by extracting elements from it. Weeks starts out by looking at the nature of capitalism and an analysis circulation, money and credit unfold from the theory of value. The nature and inherent necessity of competition are demonstrated in chapter eight. A consequence of competition, expressed in the movement of capital, is technical change, the contradictory impact of which is explained in chapter nine. This is brought together with the other elements of value theory (money, credit and competition) in chapter ten, where economic crises are treated in detail. The final chapter applies the theory of crisis to the extreme financial disturbances of the 2000s. This book should be of interest to students and researchers of economics, politics and sociology.

Download or read book Economic Representations written by and published by Routledge. This book was released on with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Economics Ethics and the Market written by Johan J. Graafland and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-10-19 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text introduces readers to the relationship between economics and ethics and to the application of economic ethics in the evaluation of the market. The insights it provides help to develop the reasoning and analytical skills needed to criticize economic analysis as well as to apply ethical concepts to moral issues in economic policy.

Download or read book Human Ecology Economics written by Roy E. Allen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-10-11 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by a leading commentator, this book helps economists rethink the boundaries and methods of their discipline, allowing them to participate more fully in debates over humankinds present problems and the ways that they can be solved.

Download or read book Economic Policy and the Financial Crisis written by Łukasz Mamica and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-03-26 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The consequences of the global economic crisis which started in the United States in 2007-08 are still being felt in most of the advanced economies, and the mainstream tools of recovery are not having the required results. It seems that many of the after-effects of the crisis, including the instability of the financial markets, increasing public debts and limited economic growth, require new solutions from both economic policy and theory. Lower aggregate demand during the crisis increased the pressure on firms to be more competitive and at the same time, the crisis in the banking system has had a negative impact on the willingness of financial institutions to give credit to companies for investment. Therefore, the key issue for current economic policy is to find a balance between the stabilisation of public finance and maintaining the momentum of long-term growth. This book offers an evolutionary-developmental analysis, combining elements of neo-Schumpeterian economics, institutional economics and post-Keynesian economics, to show that selection processes within an economy, and the institutional rules shaping those processes, are substantially more important than usually recognised by evolutionary economic theory. Two major challenges for economic theory and policy, in particular, have emerged during the crisis. The first is the rise of unemployment coupled with growing public deficits. The second is the financial instability which threatens the permanence of economic development. This book examines the performance of the advanced economies since the crisis and explores why some of them have been more successful in tackling these challenges than others. It is argued that the reasons for the varied performances of these economies lie in the economic policies which were introduced before and in the aftermath of the crisis and the differences in the regulation of their labour markets. This volume will be of interest to students and academics in the areas of macroeconomics, public economics and public management.

Download or read book Political Economy After Economics written by David Laibman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-03-01 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This re-incorporation of economics into political economy is one (small, but not insignificant) element in a larger project: to place all of the resources of present-day social-scientific research at the service of increasing democracy, in an ultimate direction toward socialism in the classic sense. An economics-enriched political economy is, above all, empowering: working people in general can calculate, build models, think theoretically, and contribute to a human-worthy future, rather than leaving all this to their "betters."

Download or read book Gender Perspectives and Gender Impacts of the Global Economic Crisis written by Rania Antonopoulos and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-03 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the full effects of the Great Recession still unfolding, this collection of essays analyses the gendered economic impacts of the crisis. The volume, from an international set of contributors, argues that gender-differentiated economic roles and responsibilities within households and markets can potentially influence the ways in which men and women are affected in times of economic crisis. Looking at the economy through a gender lens, the contributors investigate the antecedents and consequences of the ongoing crisis as well as the recovery policies adopted in selected countries. There are case studies devoted to Latin America, transition economies, China, India, South Africa, Turkey, and the USA. Topics examined include unemployment, the job-creation potential of fiscal expansion, the behavioral response of individuals whose households have experienced loss of income, social protection initiatives, food security and the environment, shedding of jobs in export-led sectors, and lessons learned thus far. From these timely contributions, students, scholars, and policymakers are certain to better understand the theoretical and empirical linkages between gender equality and macroeconomic policy in times of crisis.

Download or read book Equilibrium in Economics written by Valeria Mosini and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-01-07 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: General Equilibrium Theory, which became the dominating paradigm after the Second World War, is founded on the postulated existence, uniqueness, and stability of equilibrium in economic processes. Since then, the concept has come under sustained attack from all points of the heterodox compass, from Austrian economists to Marxists. Partly in response to these pressures, mainstream economics has changed and moved away from the rigid framework of GET. Nonetheless, economists are continually arguing in terms of equilibrium and the existence of a variety of equilibrium concepts continues to stir controversy. The contributions in this book, which include articles from Tony Lawson, Ivor Grattan-Guinness and Roger Backhouse, highlight current notions of equilibrium in economics and provide a guide to understanding the links between economic theory and economic reality.

Download or read book Robinson Crusoe s Economic Man written by Ulla Grapard and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-04-27 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, economists and literary scholars examine the uses to which the Robinson Crusoe figure has been put by the economics discipline since the publication of Defoe’s novel in 1719. The authors’ critical readings of two centuries of texts that have made use of Robinson Crusoe undermine the pervasive belief of mainstream economics that Robinson Crusoe is a benign representative of economic agency, and that he, like other economic agents, can be understood independently of historical and cultural specificity. The book provides a detailed account of the appearance of Robinson Crusoe in the economics literature and in a plethora of modern economics texts, in which, for example, we find Crusoe is portrayed as a schizophrenic consumer/producer trying to maximize his personal well-being. Using poststructuralist, feminist, postcolonial, Marxist and literary criticism approaches, the authors of the fourteen chapters in this volume examine and critique some of the deepest, fundamental assumptions neoclassical economics hold about human nature; the political economy of colonization; international trade; and the pervasive gendered organization of social relations. The contributors to this volume can be seen as engaging in the emerging conversation between economists and literary scholars known as the New Economic Criticism. They offer unique perspectives on how the economy and economic thought can be read through different disciplinary lenses. Economists pay attention to rhetoric and metaphor deployed in economics, and literary scholars have found new areas to explore and understand by focusing on economic concepts and vocabulary encountered in literary texts.

Download or read book Happiness Ethics and Economics written by Johannes Hirata and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annotation Modern happiness research has produced a wealth of evidence on the relationship between economic conditions and life satisfaction. This book provides an interpretation of this evidence and shows that it can be understood with the help of a handful of psychological and economic effects.

Download or read book Rationality and Explanation in Economics written by Maurice Lagueux and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-02-28 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyses the role of rationality in economics focusing on which conditions the rationality assumption makes valuable explanations possible and what kinds of explanation are then involved.

Download or read book Support bargaining Economics and Society written by Patrick Spread and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Support-Bargaining, Economics and Society links support-bargaining to Darwin's theory of natural selection and traces the implications of support-bargaining and money-bargaining across society. It provides a wholly different account of the functioning of human societies from anything that has gone before. Social scientists, ever since there have been such people, have missed the crucial human characteristic - the propensity to seek support - that has given rise to group formation and the myriad activities that are feasible in groups.

Download or read book Ownership Economics written by Gunnar Heinsohn and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-04-02 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the first full-length explanation in English of Heinsohn and Steiger's groundbreaking theory of money and interest, which emphasizes the role played by private property rights. Ownership economics gives an alternative explanation of money and interest, proposing that operations enabled by property lead to interest and money, rather than exchange of goods. Like any other approach, it has to answer economic theory's core question: what is the loss that has to be compensated by interest? Ownership economics accepts neither a temporary loss of goods, as in neoclassical economics, nor Keynes's temporary loss of already existing, exogenous money as the cause of interest. Rather, money is created as a non-physical title to property in a credit contract secured by a debtor's collateral and the creditor's net worth. This book is an edited English translation of a highly successful German text, and offers the first book-length treatment of a theory which has received much interest since its first appearance in articles in the late 1970s.