Providing an in-depth case study on the emergence of social impact investing in the UK, this book develops a new perspective on financialization processes that highlights the roles of non-financial actors. In contrast to the common view that impact investing gears finance toward the solution of social problems, the author analyzes how these investments create new problems and inequalities. To explain how social impact investing became popular in British social policy despite its unclear effectiveness, the author focuses on cooperative relations between institutional entrepreneurs from finance and various non-financial actors. Drawing on field theory, he shows how seemingly unrelated social transformations - such as HM Treasury's expanding role in public service reform - may act as resonance spaces for the spread of finance. Opening up a new perspective on financialization processes in the terrain of public policy, this book invites readers to refocus scholarship on capitalist dynamics to the meso-level. Based on this analysis, the author also proposes ways to transform social impact investing to increase its potential for reducing global inequalities.

This unique troika of Handbooks provide indispensable coverage of the history of economic analysis. Edited by two of the foremost academics in the field, they gather together insightful and original contributions from scholars across the world. The encyclopaedic breadth and scope of the original entries will make these Handbooks an invaluable source of knowledge for all serious students and scholars of the history of economic thought. Each Handbook can be read individually and acts as a self-contained volume in its own right. They can be purchased separately or as part of a three-volume set. Volume III contains entries on the development of major fields in economics from the inception of systematic analysis until modern times. The reader is provided with succinct summary accounts of the main problems, the methods used and the results obtained across time. The emphasis is on both the continuity and major changes that have occurred in the economic analysis of problematic issues such as economic growth, income distribution, employment, inflation, business cycles and financial instability. Contributors: M. Assous, A. Baccini, Jr., A. Baujard, E. Bertrand, M. Boumans, J.L. Cardoso, M. Dal Pont-Legrand, J. De Boyer Des Roches, M. De Vroey, S. Di Rizzello, S. Diatkine, K. Dopfer, A.K. Dutt, R. Ege, G. Erreygers, D. Foley, R. Gomez Betancourt, D. Haas, H. Hagemann, E. Hosoda, H. Igersheim, A. Kirman, J. Kleinert, H. Kliemt, H.D. Kurz, R. Leonard, P. Malgrange, A. Maneschi, P. Mehrling, S. Mohun, M. Mosca, S. Noto, A. Opocher, N. Palan, F. Petri, A. Rainer, S. Rizzello, J.B. Rosser, M. Salles, N. Salvadori, M. Schutz, R. Signorino, A. Spada, P. Steiner, A. Stirati, R. Strohmaier, R. Sturn, C. Sunna, J.-F. Thisse, P. Tubaro, K. Watarai

Over the past twenty years there has emerged a compelling new discourse on varieties of capitalism. That discourse has an appealing common sense which challenges the view there is no alternative to free market capitalism. The initial view had a microeconomic focus that made firms the fulcrum of analysis. It distinguished between liberal market and coordinated market economies. Subsequently, there has emerged a second-generation literature which adopts a macroeconomic perspective that emphasizes differences in drivers of growth. This book provides a collection of essays that engage those second-generation concerns and questions. The new view emphasizes income distribution, which leads to a focus on institutional structures that are shaped by policy and power. A related feature is an emphasis on politics, which is the process by which policies are made. Furthermore, it asks whether economies should be understood as the product of national choices versus global capitalist system forces. That connects with the long-standing center-periphery distinction in development economics. Economists, researchers, and students will find this volume an enlightening look at an important subject.

This important book goes beyond generalizations and takes a hard-headed look at the real strengths and weaknesses of Keynesian demand management and supply side economics.Keynesianism has failed to reconcile high levels of competitiveness with full employment. This was confirmed in the 1980s by the performance of the UK, the US and West Germany. Sweeping de-regulation has not proved to be an adequate solution. The book shows how effective supply conditions could supplement Keynesian demand management to achieve sustainable levels of high employment. The measures advocated include a system of industrial relations which allows high wages and job security in return for acceptance of a high pace of technological and organizational change; the promotion of skill development as well as intra-firm training programmes; the formation and encouragement of co-operation between different regions. It is argued that the supportive institutions, coupled with effective demand policies would succeed in marrying high employment with internationally competitive production.

A sweeping and original history of how economists across two centuries have thought about inequality, told through portraits of six key figures.

“How do you see income distribution in your time, and how and why do you expect it to change?” That is the question Branko Milanovic imagines posing to six of history's most influential economists: François Quesnay, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, Vilfredo Pareto, and Simon Kuznets. Probing their works in the context of their lives, he charts the evolution of thinking about inequality, showing just how much views have varied among ages and societies. Indeed, Milanovic argues, we cannot speak of “inequality” as a general concept: any analysis of it is inextricably linked to a particular time and place.

Visions of Inequality takes us from Quesnay and the physiocrats, for whom social classes were prescribed by law, through the classic nineteenth-century treatises of Smith, Ricardo, and Marx, who saw class as a purely economic category driven by means of production. It shows how Pareto reconceived class as a matter of elites versus the rest of the population, while Kuznets saw inequality arising from the urban-rural divide. And it explains why inequality studies were eclipsed during the Cold War, before their remarkable resurgence as a central preoccupation in economics today.

Meticulously extracting each author’s view of income distribution from their often voluminous writings, Milanovic offers an invaluable genealogy of the discourse surrounding inequality. These intellectual portraits are infused not only with a deep understanding of economic theory but also with psychological nuance, reconstructing each thinker’s outlook given what was knowable to them within their historical contexts and methodologies.

The theory of inflation seeks to explain why inflation occurs and why its rate varies, to explain the co-movements betwen the inflation rate and other variables and to permit the design of mechanisms capable of delivering an optimal inflation path.The Theory of Inflation presents in one volume a comprehensive description of the historical inflation record, surveys the current state of knowledge on the fundamental forces that cause inflation and the mechanisms that propagate it, and examines the costs of inflation and the problems of achieving price stability. Professor Parkin's selection draws both upon the contribution of mainstream economists - whose work has been based on market demand and supply - and a new generation whose work has emphasized the importance of technology and preferences. This volume, as the introduction states, indicates that there is much of value to be learnt from both approaches.

Oskar Lange was one of the few economists able to observe first hand the three major economic systems that have been the hallmark of the 20th century. He learned about the economic backwardness of peripheral capitalism in pre-war Poland. Later he spent more than twelve years in the bastion of modern capitalism, the United States. After returning to Poland in 1948 he linked his fate to the creation and then reform of the Communist system.This important collection of Professor Lange's work, prepared by his disciple and close friend Tadeusz Kowalik, presents his most important work on the economic theory of socialism, economic planning, Marxism and 'bourgeois' economics. The volume makes an important contribution by improving access to the papers of an economist whose work was at the very heart of the intellectual conflict between socialism and capitalism in the late twentieth century.

The rapid development of a series of technologically advanced, industrial economies in the post-war period has challenged conventional understandings of economic growth. The emergence of these economies has reinvigorated the long-standing debate about why some countries grow quickly, and reach high levels of productivity, while others fall behind. Until the emergence of the new growth theory, few neoclassical economists focused upon this important issue despite the existence of a rich tradition among economic historians and economists from more heterodox traditions. The Dynamics of Technology, Trade and Growth draws upon contributions of scholars from different theoretical backgrounds to discuss why economies succeed, or fail, in creating the infrastructure, finance and technology to develop rapidly and 'catch-up' with others. After an overview by the editors of theoretical and practical developments in the economics of convergence and divergence, the book features chapters which discuss the origins of the post-war catch-up and convergence boom, convergence in trade and sectoral growth, capital accumulation, investment and resource allocation, specialization, technological change, and the potential contribution of information and communication technologies. The distinguished contributors bring together in one volume a breadth of scholarship on economic growth, convergence and divergence, ensuring that this book will be widely read by economists interested in growth, technical change and economic development.

Technical change and its relationship to economic growth are now at the forefront of research in economics. This important book - which contains contributions from leading economists - provides an invaluable state-of-the-art survey and analysis of the most recent work in this area. The book sheds new light on such major themes and issues as: the sources of technological knowledge and growth and time patterns in the growth and innovation process. It also addresses the role of national institutions and social infrastructure in growth, convergence and divergence in the world economy from both the modelling and the empirical perspectives, and the microfoundations of technology diffusion and learning by doing.The Economics of Growth and Technical Change will be essential reading for all economists with an interest in the economics of innovation and economic growth.

This important new book is the first specific study on the classical theory of wages to appear for more than 50 years and as such fills an important gap in the literature. Antonella Stirati argues that the wage-fund theory played no part in the theory of wages expounded by Ricardo and his predecessors. Classical wage theory is shown to be analytically consistent but very different from contemporary theory, particularly as it did not envisage an inverse relationship between employment and the real wage level, and hence a spontaneous tendency to full employment of labour. The author bases her approach not only on a reinterpretation of Smith and Ricardo, but also on the writings of Turgot, Necker, Steuart, Hume, Cantillon and other pre-classical economists. Historians of economic thought as well as other economists will welcome Dr Stirati's careful analysis of classical writings on economics which includes simple but rigorous explanations of phenomena, central to current economic debate, such as the occurrence of persistent unemployment.

Takeshi Amemiya has made a significant contribution to econometric theory over the past 30 years. This volume brings together 34 of his key articles and papers on areas such as limited dependent variables, non-linear simultaneous equations models, time series analysis and error components models. Many of the articles reprinted in this volume are indispensable references for researchers in the relevant fields. The specially written preface outlines the influences and motivations behind Professor Amemiya's work. Studies in Econometric Theory presents in a single volume the most significant work of one of the most important influential econometricians of our time.

This important volume of original essays by a distinguished group of scholars from the evolutionary, institutional and socio-economic schools makes a major contribution to the reconstruction of political economy as an evolutionary science. The book explores the consequences of adopting a broader approach to economics taking into account issues such as historical time and change, individual-institutional interaction, uncertainty and procedural rationality. This carefully edited selection of papers focuses on four themes: theoretical foundations, policy making, empirical enquiry and modelling. A political economy of diversity is advocated by the contributors with analytical specificity and originality applied to a series of topics including industrial and market restructuring, technological change, ecological sustainability, development, monetary aggregates and governmental policy making. By recognising the importance of accepting diversity and complexity when applying economic analysis, this unique and provocative volume makes a seminal contribution at the frontiers of economic theory and identifies a common theme in non-orthodox scholarship.

This lucid, up-to-date book takes a fresh look at the application of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) to environmental problems ranging from wildlife protection to global warming. Cost-Benefit Analysis and the Environment is structured into two parts. Part one provides a critical up-to-date account of the theory and practice of CBA as applied to the environment. Part two focuses on a number of specific case studies, in particular ozone damage to agricultural crops, wilderness land use, recreation and nitrate pollution. The application of CBA to the greenhouse effect is used to illustrate the limitations of the method. The book summarizes the major problems CBA faces in environmental application. This book will be highly relevant for the growing number of undergraduate and post-graduate courses in environmental economics and management, as well as being of interest both to academics researching in these areas, and to other professionals concerned with project appraisal and the environment.

Economic Theory and Capitalist Society is a collection of Shigeto Tsuru's most important essays written over the period of the past 60 years in the fields of general economic theory, development and environmental economics, and Marxian political economy. Professor Tsuru has been a leading critic of the major tenets of modern economic theory and has been credited in particular for his comparative studies of aggregate concepts, such as those of Quesnay, Keynes and Marx. Essentially an institutionalist, the author reviews the methodological significance of Marx's contribution, taking up in detail the latter's unique concept of the 'fetishism of commodities' and discussing the relevance of Marxian methodology to the analysis of present-day capitalism. The author's critique of the fundamental equation of growth accounting developed by Robert Solow, 'Effects of Technology on Productivity', is one of a number of theoretical papers included in this volume. It also features a series of important essays on environmental economics which the author, as a founder of the Japanese environmental movement, has written over the past half century. This collection of key articles by one of the most distinguished Japanese economists will be welcomed by students and practitioners in the fields of institutional and radical economics, environmental economics and the history of economic thought. The volume also includes an autobiographical essay which explains the development of Professor Tsuru's thought, his education at Harvard in the 1930s and his experience of post-war Japan. The Economic Development of Modern Japan, the second volume of Shigeto Tsuru's selected essays, is also published by Edward Elgar.

This examination of transport economics brings alive economic theories for students, elucidating traditional concepts by applying them to a real world context. It examines the microeconomic concepts that underpin this sector and the implications for transport markets with real examples from across the EU. Also available is a companion website with extra features to accompany the text, please take a look by clicking below - http://www.palgrave.com/economics/transport/Home.aspx

Dynamic programming (DP) has a relevant history as a powerful and flexible optimization principle, but has a bad reputation as a computationally impractical tool. This book fills a gap between the statement of DP principles and their actual software implementation. Using MATLAB throughout, this tutorial gently gets the reader acquainted with DP and its potential applications, offering the possibility of actual experimentation and hands-on experience. The book assumes basic familiarity with probability and optimization, and is suitable to both practitioners and graduate students in engineering, applied mathematics, management, finance and economics.

Since economies are dynamic processes driven by creativity, social norms, and emotions as well as rational calculation, why do economists largely study them using static equilibrium models and narrow rationalistic assumptions? Economic activity is as much a function of imagination and social sentiments as of the rational optimisation of given preferences and goods. In this 2009 book, Richard Bronk argues that economists can best model and explain these creative and social aspects of markets by using new structuring assumptions and metaphors derived from the poetry and philosophy of the Romantics. By bridging the divide between literature and science, and between Romanticism and narrow forms of Rationalism, economists can access grounding assumptions, models, and research methods suitable for comprehending the creativity and social dimensions of economic activity. This is a guide to how economists and other social scientists can broaden their analytical repertoire to encompass the vital role of sentiments, language, and imagination.

This book paints a portrait of social life in America by providing an accessible discussion of empirical economics research on issues such as illegal immigration, health care and climate change. All the studies in this book use the same data source: individual responses to the American Community Survey (ACS), the nation's largest household survey. The author identifies studies that clearly illustrate core econometric methods (such as regression control and difference-in-differences), replicates key statistics from the studies, and helps the reader to carefully interpret the statistics. This book has a companion website with replication files in R and Stata format. The Appendix to this book contains a guide to using the free R software, downloading the ACS and other public-use microdata, and running the replication files, which assumes no background knowledge on the part of the reader beyond introductory statistics. By opening up the hood on how top scholars use core econometric methods to analyze large data sets, a motivated reader with a decent computer and Internet connection can use this book to learn not only how to replicate published research, but also to extend the analysis to create new knowledge about important social phenomena. A more casual reader can skip the online supplements and still gain data-driven insights into social and economic behavior. The book concludes by describing how careful empirical estimates can guide decision making, through cost-benefit analysis, to find public policies that lead to greater happiness while accounting for environmental, public health and other impacts. With its accessible discussion, glossary, detailed learning goals, end of chapter review questions and companion resources, this book is ideal for use as a supplementary volume in introductory econometrics or research methods courses.

This book develops a unified treatment of the income distribution-capital-value problems with respect to actual economies, and then gradually turns to the issues of effective demand and capitalist accumulation fluctuations from both political economy and economic policy perspectives. That treatment, on the one hand, places produced means of production, positive profits, and capital accumulation at the centre of the analysis and, on the other hand, is analytically based on the modern control theory. Hence, the authors' investigation is concerned with input-output representations of actual single and joint production, heterogeneous labour, and open economies; zeroes in on the characteristic value distributions of the system matrices; and, finally, derives meaningful theoretical results consistent with the empirical evidence, and vice versa. The main topics addressed are the uncontrollable/unobservable aspects of the real-world economies, the powerful low-order spectral approximations and reconstructions of the inter-industry structure of production-value-distributive variables relationships, the critical-constructive appraisal of both "mainstream" and "radical" theories of value, the matrix demand multipliers and demand-switching policies in heterogeneous capital worlds, and the circular inter-actions amongst income distribution, effective demand, accumulation, and technical conditions of production. Written on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the publication of both Piero Sraffa's Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities and Rudolf E. Kalman's paper "On the general theory of control systems", this book provides a consistent and comprehensive framework for theoretical, empirical, and economic policy research.

Property rights lie at the heart of the economic success of any economy and the extent to which its citizens enjoy economic freedom. At a time when Eastern Europe is breaking free from the yoke of collectivist-socialist ideas, this book presents essays by four political economists evaluating a range of feasible reforms intended to breathe new life into constitutional republicanism. The first essay by James M. Buchanan grounds the defence of private property ownership in the protection that it affords to individual liberty. This is followed by a succinct but comprehensive account by Gordon Tullock of his research programme in rent seeking. This is a great and instructive contribution which skilfully draws out the dangerous implications of rent seeking for private property rights. A far-reaching and insightful essay by Richard E. Wagner exposes the failure of the United States constitution to overcome the tyranny of the majority so feared by the Founding Fathers: the author demonstrates why the tyranny of the majority cannot be overcome by a written constitution unless the institutions of society are designed to offer complementary support to limited government and the rule of law. In the final essay, Charles Rowley retraces the history of social choice theory, identifies the errors that it has promulgated and the corrective lessons that can be learned from the classical liberal philosophy that it has substantially ignored. Including essays by some of the most eminent scholars in the field, Property Rights and the Limits of Democracy makes an important and distinguished contribution to one of the most central issues in political economy in the late twentieth century.

In this reassessment of the 19th century monetary theorist and banking reformer, Thomas Joplin, Professor O'Brien sets out to place his subject in a new perspective. He discusses Joplin's role as a reformer and his relationships with fellow economists and explores such issues as the problems of paper currency, the principle of metallic fluctuation, agricultural prices and the monetary system and the structure of banking. The book should be of interest to anyone interested in the development of monetary economics as well as to economic historians.

The history of economics comprises the accumulated capital of the discipline; its study permits both the retrieval of important ideas and the conduct of analysis which places present day work in context. The essays in this book demonstrate some of the variety of uses to which the history of economics, as a sub-discipline, can be put.Economic Thought and Discourse in the 20th Century commences with an essay on John R. Hicks, one of the leading economic theorists of the twentieth century and a writer with much to say about the nature of economic theory and the functions of the history of economic thought. An essay on Thorstein Veblen examines a figure who is at once both idiosyncratic and monumental, and whose work on war and peace is seen both to have been deeply prescient at the time it was written, and to be critically relevant at the close of the twentieth century. The third piece in this collection is a study of the discursive and interpretative structure of Alfred Marshall's Principles of Economics. More than a century after its publication, the Principles is widely regarded as one of the most important, and immediately influential, works of economic science ever written. Yet, it is argued, Marshall's use of language and argument may well have been equal in importance to the analytical techniques which he demonstrated. The concluding essay on the early journal history of law and economics places in perspective much of the contemporary work in this area and suggests that more could be expected from a field with such a rich and suggestive history. These essays will make significant contributions both to their respective subjects and to the historiography of economics.

Traditional aggregate theories of the business cycle, Keynesian or the neoclassical, have not succeeded in explaining the severe down turns in the United States and other advanced economies. New Perspectives on Business Cycles proposes a theory that economic inequality and heterogeneity in a market economy may be an important influence on business cycles. The author, Satya Das, provides for the first time a systematic assessment of possible links between business cycles and changes in the distribution of income and wealth.Arguing that changes in the distribution of wealth and income in a private market economy can generate variations in the aggregate output, Professor Das uses a series of models to relate economic inequalities across households to fluctuations in the economy. In particular, he argues that severe inequities in wealth and income distribution can lead to fluctuations in a macroeconomy, with important implications for the financial markets. Empirical evidence from the post-war US economy is presented in support of this theory.

Post Keynesianism offers an appealing alternative to the mainstream approach to economics, which makes this volume particularly welcome. John King draws on his expertise to provide a clear, accessible and cohesive overview. He explains how Post Keynesian economics is different from other schools of thought, including other 'Keynesianisms', emphasizing its distinctive methodology. King explores the nature and evolution of Post Keynesian ideas and spells out their relevance for current economic analysis and policy-making, using the crisis as a case study.' - Sheila Dow, University of Stirling, UK and University of Victoria, Canada'John E. King's Advanced Introduction to Post Keynesian Economics provides a superb overview of this school of thought. It covers the main areas of contribution and distinguishes Post Keynesian economics both from orthodox economics and from other heterodox schools, in a clear and accessible way. In a time of increasing demand for relevance and pluralism in economics, this book will be extremely useful for students and young researchers interested in alternatives to current mainstream economics.' - Eckhard Hein, Berlin School of Economics and Law, Germany Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences and law, expertly written by the world's leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas. This brief but comprehensive account of the Post Keynesian approach to economic theory and policy is ideal for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students in economics, public policy and other social sciences. Clear, non-technical and with a strong policy focus, it will also appeal to all of those who are dissatisfied with mainstream economics and wish to explore the alternatives. John King sets out the distinctive features of Post Keynesian economics and their implications for the assessment of alternative proposals for domestic and international macroeconomic policy. He begins by outlining the core elements of Post Keynesian theory and explains how it differs from other schools, including the so-called 'Old Keynesian' and 'New Keynesian' theories. Subsequent chapters deal with the important methodological issues that distinguish the Post Keynesians from mainstream economists, in addition to their treatment of firms, workers and households, the analysis of economic growth and development, as well as international economics. The Post Keynesian approach to monetary and fiscal policy, incomes and the environment is also summarized, with particular attention being paid to controversies over austerity and the reform of the financial sector and international monetary system. The Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2008 is used as a case study to illustrate many of the significant theoretical and policy questions raised in previous chapters. The relationship between Post Keynesian and other branches of heterodox economics are explored, and the book concludes with a brief discussion of the future prospects for the Post Keynesian school.