Challenging the libertarians' definition of "freedom" and "democracy," this study portrays the social philosophy of Milton Friedman, James Buchanan, Friedrich Hayek, and George Stigler as the bulwark of an attack on welfare and regulatory state collectivism and as undermining majoritarian democracy, political and civil liberties, and social equality. The book opens with Frank Knight's doctrines and their impact on the Chicago laissez faire economists, places libertarianism within the American tradition of empirical collectivism, and explores Friedrich Hayek's road-to-serfdom thesis within the context of the New Deal. Posing problems of corporate power, it uses Friedman, Stigler, and Buchanan as examples of libertarian denial of these problems and, in a consideration of the debate between the New Left and Libertarian Right, contrasts their ideologies.

The work concludes with a historical summing up that juxtaposes the recent past to the present, links libertarian material interests with the growth of corporate hegemony, and portrays the right wing of neoclassical economics as an intellectual bulwark of business culture. The emergent plutocracy that we now live in, including the erosion of democratic theory and practice, owes a significant part of its doctrinal and political sustenance to the influence of the free market economists who are the subject of this book. The study is the first to use the unpublished papers of libertarians James Buchanan, Gordon Tullock, Milton Friedman, and George Stigler to bring their interpretations of the meaning of "freedom" and "democracy" into question.

This book investigates why Austrian economists fail to apply the spontaneous order framework to cooperative relationships - such as a dynamic and evolving public sector - that might complement a thriving market. In direct response to Israel Kirzner's The Driving Force of the Market, Nell challenges traditional Austrian economics by proposing "democratic process theory" as a parallel to market process theory, highlighting the possibilities for an economic organization that harnesses the power of transparent and effective democracy. Keeping in mind the central problems experienced in socialist and capitalist countries due to self-interested political and economic actors, The Driving Force of the Collective highlights the public sector advantages of allowing culture and institutions to evolve endogenously as a spontaneous public sector order.

This collection of essays develops Edward Nell's influential theory of transformational growth. Nell sets established concepts such as the classical notion of prices of production and the wage-profit frontier within a significant new framework that illustrates their role in the dynamic evoution of the industrial system from its beginnings in feudalism through the early capitalism of the family firms to the modern system of effective demands and multiplier adjustments. The essays present the method and its relation to the capital critique before developing the main ideas of transformational growth through a series of historical studies culminating in a revised theory of the multiplier. Outlining policies which strongly affirm an expansionist approach, Nell porposes a reconstruction of macroeconimics.

This book is a collection of specially commissioned chapters from philosophers, economists, and political scientists, focusing on Adam Smith's two main works Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations with a view to bringing Smith to a mainstream philosophy audience while simultaneously informing Smith's traditional constituency.

This book is in equal parts a treatise on morality and economics, a critique of neoclassical orthodoxy, a brief for replacing mainstream economics with a radical political economics, and an argument for the abandonment of neoliberal capitalism in favor of democratic socialism. It includes a detailed proposal for a "demand and cost" alternative to "supply and demand" analysis and an in-depth technical critique of both neoclassical "high theory" and "applied microeconomic analysis" demonstrating that these are not only infeasible or immoral, but have directly contributed to public policy disasters. Further, the book suggests that only a moral economics in the form of radical political economy can address the looming economic and environmental crises of today's world. Baiman begins with an introduction to morality and ethics in both general sciences and in economics in particular. He then guides readers through evidence of how neoclassical economics has not only failed to remain objective and value-free, but has become an ideology of apologetics protecting an immoral system. In addition to breaking down real-world examples to demonstrate his assertions, Baiman analyzes a theoretical Utopia design exercise. He concludes by arguing that the only form of economics that supports widely shared human values-such as social equity, democracy, and solidarity-is so-called "radical economics", and that all true economics science should be directed toward achieving more socially productive economic activity. An invaluable guide to morality and economics, this book will appeal to researchers and teachers looking to change the way we think about economics, policy, and society.

In 2020 the world found itself in a state of flux. A global pandemic disrupted the world order while the digital transformation of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), with its challenges and huge potential benefits, presented a fundamental paradigm shift. How are Africa’s leaders to respond, today?

In a crisis, decisive leadership is imperative for the public good, but as we move beyond the pandemic and confront the changes of the 4IR, we must determine how we will adapt. What is clear is that leadership will have to be grounded in scientific and mathematical thinking and in good governance. It follows, then, that for South Africa to succeed as a nation in the 21st century we must be able to provide our people with an all-embracing education – not just science and technology but human and social sciences as well.

Leading in the 21st Century presents a comprehensive overview of how the world is changing and lessons we can draw from leaders, particularly in the African context. From Charlotte Maxeke and the Rain Queen Modjadji, to Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe, Eric Molobi and Richard Maponya, there is much to learn from great leaders. The challenges of the 21st century are immense – from climate change to social media and the digital divide that deepens our understanding of inequality, particularly in the ‘new normal’. South Africa faces not only a shifting global context but a fraught local context of stagnant growth, rising unemployment and deep-seated inequality, worsened in 2020 by the national lockdown necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic. The 4IR offers solutions to many of our most pressing problems and we cannot afford to be left behind.

The certainty is that the 4IR has arrived. The debates lie in how we respond to it. Tshilidzi Marwala deciphers it all, while providing a framework for navigating these shifts.

This book reflects the state of the art on nonlinear economic dynamics, financial market modelling and quantitative finance. It contains eighteen papers with topics ranging from disequilibrium macroeconomics, monetary dynamics, monopoly, financial market and limit order market models with boundedly rational heterogeneous agents to estimation, time series modelling and empirical analysis and from risk management of interest-rate products, futures price volatility and American option pricing with stochastic volatility to evaluation of risk and derivatives of electricity market. The book illustrates some of the most recent research tools in these areas and will be of interest to economists working in economic dynamics and financial market modelling, to mathematicians who are interested in applying complexity theory to economics and finance and to market practitioners and researchers in quantitative finance interested in limit order, futures and electricity market modelling, derivative pricing and risk management.

What role did women play in the pre-industrial European economy? Sheilagh Ogilvie tackles this question in an original way, using a rich body of new evidence. By examining women's contribution to a particular pre-industrial economy - the German state of Württemberg - Ogilvie casts doubt on most of the extensive literature about pre-industrial women's work. She also refutes the theory of 'social capital' which claims that traditional networks, like guilds with their shared norms, benefited everyone. She shows how network insiders benefited at the expense of outsiders, especially women. The result was a 'bitter living' - not only for women, but for everyone.

Providing an up-to-date account of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) with contributions from the world's leading experts, each chapter offers new insights on the topic, building upon MMT's established body of work. This innovative book analyses key economic issues from a wide set of regions including the UK, Europe and the Global South, addressing previous concerns that MMT is too US-focused. Alongside ground-breaking research written by MMT's original developers and leading academics, the book also includes contributions from economic historians and public policy campaigners, highlighting how MMT contributes to challenging neoliberalism and the hegemony of mainstream macroeconomics. Offering an examination of the existing legal, institutional and policy framework which governs the UK Exchequer in particular, it examines how the central claims of MMT map onto the financial activities of the UK government. This will be key reading for undergraduate and postgraduate economics students, as well as more advanced scholars of the discipline, particularly for those looking into theories of finance, money and banking. It will also have a wider appeal across the social sciences, including politics and sociology students.

Economic analysis of law is an interesting and challenging attempt to employ the concepts and reasoning methods of modern economic theory so as to gain a deeper understanding of legal problems. According to Richard A. Posner it is the role of the law to encourage market competition and, where the market fails because transaction costs are too high, to simulate the result of competitive markets. This would maximize economic efficiency and social wealth.

In this work, the lawyer and economist Klaus Mathis critically appraises Posner s normative justification of the efficiency paradigm from the perspective of the philosophy of law. Posner acknowledges the influences of Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham, whom he views as the founders of normative economics. He subscribes to Smith s faith in the market as an ideal allocation model, and to Bentham s ethical consequentialism. Finally, aligning himself with John Rawls s contract theory, he seeks to legitimize his concept of wealth maximization with a consensus theory approach.

In his interdisciplinary study, the author points out the possibilities as well as the limits of economic analysis of law. It provides a method of analysing the law which, while very helpful, is also rather specific. The efficiency arguments therefore need to be incorporated into a process for resolving value conflicts. In a democracy this must take place within the political decision-making process. In this clearly written work, Klaus Mathis succeeds in making even non-economists more aware of the economic aspects of the law."

Working within the context of the evolutionary-institutional transformation of higher education, the authors trace the development of an economic model by which the behavioral tendencies of modern universities can be evaluated. That model is expanded to provide insights to the following questions: Why do universities compete and how do they develop and implement their competitive strategies? How do universities make critical institutional decisions about operational missions, academic policies, and internal resource allocation? Do universities efficiently and effectively pursue the special social functions assigned to them? Patrick Raines and Charles Leathers present an integrated, coherent theory to explain the behavior of universities and provide a realistic economic model that predicts how universities allocate their scarce educational resources. This alternative view is contrasted with the mainstream explanations of university behavior based on the maximization of student welfare or faculty influences. The authors extend the existing literature on the operation of universities by presenting a history of the evolution of the modern entrepreneurial universities as well as an explanation of academic capitalism. This absorbing volume will appeal to anyone interested in the history of economic thought or the history of education. Scholars of Veblen, Smith, and Malthus will be fascinated by their individual and comparative theories of the purpose and failures of higher education.

Henry George was the greatest, most famous and most rejected of early American economists. Without formal education he trained himself in classical economics and developed a theory of a "single tax" suggestive of the work of the earlier French "economistes." Academic economists of his day rejected his work, but it enjoyed great public popularity in the United States, Europe, Australia and other places. He was more widely read than any other early American economist. History has seen his rehabilitation at the hand of modern economists who have reviewed and analyzed his work in great detail. There is much specialized literature on many specific facets and aspects of George's work, but we lack a book which provides an overview of George's economics and of this historic rehabilitation. This brief book attempts to fill that gap.

This volume brings a plurality of approaches, from political economic to Foucauldian, to bear on the broad range of contestations around urban neoliberalism. The contributors explore the range of resistant agency and reveal the heterogeneity of intersecting power relations that movements mobilize against.

Informal sector has emerged as a critical element in the development process of theentiredevelopingworld.Itisnowwellrecognisedthatsuchasectorprovides employmenttothemajorityoftheworkforceinthepoorcountries.Sometimesthe shareofemploymentintheseactivitiesgoeswaybeyond50%oftotalemployment. Informalusuallyreferstoextra-legalandnon-recordedeconomicactivitiesandcan captureawholearrayofdiverseoccupations, productsandservices.Development Economicsasadisciplinehasnottreatedsuchtopicswithadequatereverence.Text booksdealingwitheconomicdevelopmentdonothaveexclusivesectionsdevoted to the discussion of growth, dynamics and sustenance of informal activities. In particular how informal transactions in?uence employment, output, productivity, wagesandenvironmentisseldomdiscussedformallyintermsofanalyticalm- els. Informal sector does not operate in a vacuum. Thus the general equilibrium linkages involving the informal and formal activities also need to be explored in detailifdevelopmentpoliciesaretobeproperlyevaluated.Thisvolumesuccessfully addressesboththeseissuesanddoesitwithcompetenceandrigour. Authorsofthisvolumehavebeenworkingonthefrontiersofdevelopmentpolicy researchinthecontextofopendevelopingeconomies, focusingmainlyongeneral equilibriumimplicationsofsuchpolicies.Infactoneoftheauthorshaswrittenat length on informal credit market. Sustained research programme on such a topic ofgreatsigni?cancelendscredibilitytothisvolume.Itisalsohightimethats- eralinternationalpublicationsoftheauthorsinrelatedareasareputtogetherina comprehensivemonograph.Iamde?nitesuchavolumewillbeveryhelpfultos- dents, researchers, policy makers and anyone seriously interested in development economics. CentreforStudiesinSocialSciences, Calcutta, India SugataMarjit vii Preface In the last few decades informal sector has drawn serious cognizance among economists in view of its role in developing economies. The earlier contention that the informal sector epitomises the 'residual' sector or a sector of last resort has been belied by a plethora of evidences indicating its dynamic character and its instrumental role in ameliorating unemployment and in propelling the dev- oping economies towards growth and prosperity. This conceptual metamorphosis regarding the informal sector has stimulated revived interest in the phenomenon amongdevelopmenteconomists.Thereexistmanybooksthatdealwiththesector analyticallyorempirically. However, the theoretical analysis of the different aspects of the sector is equally important, especially for formulation of appropriate policy prescriptions. Comparativestaticresults, inmanycases, divergefromtheconventionalresults.We noticedthatalthoughvariousauthorshavepublishedtheoreticalpapersindifferent journals, there are very few books that try to understand the informal sector in a theoreticalframework.Thislacunainculcatedinusaninteresttowritethisbook.

With more and more global economic wealth and power resting with fewer and fewer people, and given the acute land inequalities in the rural areas of Africa, Latin America, and Asia, how valid are the dominant theories about the nature of rural livelihoods? How can the intricacies of the economic and social transformations that are unfolding in the rural areas of developing countries best be understood? The authors of Equitable Rural Socioeconomic Change address these questions as they explore the interrelated themes of land inequality, climate dynamics, and technological innovation across varied rural landscapes, primarily in South Africa, but also in Rwanda, and Brazil.

The forefathers of neoclassical or conventional economics, beginning with Walras, wanted to build a psycho-mathematical science similar to celestial mechanics. However, during the first half of the last century, they succumbed to the charm of axiomatization: Hence, economics remains a stillborn science. Its theory is plagued with incongruities, generating misleading notions and policies that are detrimental to human welfare and environmental equilibrium. Its truths have significantly low half-lives, and its confused pronouncements have become an open ground in which false consciousness rumble unchallenged. This state of affairs calls for a fundamental revision.

After reviewing the evolution of economics from Antiquity to the present and pointing to its inadequacies, Dominique proposes an alternative formulation which not only sheds light on the enduring features of market economics but also makes economics consistent with physics, the mother of all sciences. This is a challenging revision for scholars, students, and others involved with economic theory.

This book presents an exploration of the idea of the common or social good, extended so that alternatives with different populations can be ranked. The approach is, in the main, welfarist, basing rankings on the well-being, broadly conceived, of those who are alive (or ever lived). The axiomatic method is employed, and topics investigated include: the measurement of individual well-being, social attitudes toward inequality of well-being, the main classes of population principles, principles that provide incomplete rankings, principles that rank uncertain alternatives, best choices from feasible sets, and applications. The chapters are divided, with mathematical arguments confined to the second part. The first part is intended to make the arguments accessible to a more general readership. Although the book can be read as a defense of the critical-level generalized-utilitarian class of principles, comprehensive examinations of other classes are included.

These volumes gather together a selection of autobiographical essays written by significant economists whose work is generally recognized to be at the forefront of the discipline as we enter the twenty-first century. The essays are largely based on introductions to volumes in the Edward Elgar series Economists of the Twentieth Century (which collects together the key papers of these economists). This volume focuses on leading economists who were born, or have spent the greater part of their lives, in Europe, Asia and Australasia. The main chapters are accompanied by an introduction in which the editors place the autobiographical essays in a wider context. Economists will be fascinated by: * the stories that lie behind familiar names * why economists approach problems the way they do * how careers develop * how economists view what they are doing. These are all points that are invisible to those who simply read the published output of economics, so readers will gain personal insights into the development of the field. The books will be a valuable resource for economists, particularly historians of economic thought, as well as sociologists concerned with the economics profession, and those interested in the creative process and the social and scientific development of economics.

This work provides a consistent and empirically meaningful definition of surplus and suggests an analytical framework for studying economic growth and stagnation using that concept. The book also presents a case study of the role of surplus in economic growth. In the first part of the work, a method is developed emphasizing the links to classical economic theory and the logical flaws of the earlier works. The second part examines the role of surplus in one country, and tests the classical hypotheses about growth in the long run and in a cross-section of countries.

Why does contemporary calculation proceed as calculation of the quality of everything, to the extent that quality comes to be perceived as a controversial word, endowed with enigmatic power? How should we consider calculation of quality? And how, from the perspective of quality, can we renew questioning on the very nature of the calculative and on the (in)calculability of the human? In what way should we approach quality and calculability in current socio-economic and managerial scenarios? In considering quality of life and its calculation, how can we reflect on the issue of life enhancement? What does it mean that, precisely under the banner of quality, life, in its individuality and totality, emerges as being obviously calculable and enhanceable? How should we think of quality, calculation and life when life resonates on the scale of the post-human?
These are some of the main questions that the book addresses through a phenomenological investigation and an analysis of the social science debate.

This book discusses the influence of technological and institutional change on development and growth, the impact on innovation of labor markets, the spatial distribution of innovation dynamics, and the meaning of knowledge generation and knowledge diffusion processes for development policies. The individual articles demonstrate the powerful possibilities that emerge from the toolkit of evolutionary and Schumpeterian economics. The book shows that evolutionary economics can be applied to the multi-facetted phenomena of economic development, and that a strong orientation on knowledge and innovation is key to development, especially in less developed and emerging economies.

This volume presents a compilation of key papers chronicling the evolution of the economics of information into the economics of knowledge. It traces the unfolding of the fertile ambiguity and ambivalence of the notion of information with the identification and eventual separation of its two basic, quite distinct meanings: knowledge and signals. It documents the progressive understanding that it is not only necessary to search, screen and understand signals, but also to assess and select them so as to distinguish between true, false and fake ones. The capability to process signals and transform them into actual information stems from the stock of competence and knowledge that individuals and organizations possess and mobilize. The success of information economics paves the way to the economics of knowledge and this review will be an indispensable research tool for all those working and studying in the field.

Drawing upon evolutionary economics and resource-based approaches, the author utilises US patent data from 1930-1990 to examine the persistence of corporate technological competencies and their gradual erosion through diversifying incremental change. The book explores the changing nature of this diversification with respect to firm size, technological relatedness and technological complexity in 32 firms distributed across four broadly defined industrial sectors. The findings suggest that industry and corporate technological profiles remain strong but are becoming blurred by the pervasiveness of general-purpose technologies. Although historically, diversification is associated with an increase in firm size, the author argues that in recent times it results from technological relatedness and complexity. This book will appeal to industrial and business economists, historians of business and technology, and students and scholars of technology management.

Historically, bubbles have been understood primarily in financial-economic terms. In this exciting new work, Dholakia and Turcan argue that bubbles are also a socio-political and cultural phenomena, with intense and accelerating interactions of engineered hype and feverish expectations.