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Books > Business & Economics > Economics > Economic theory & philosophy
This book contends that liberalization is troubled in new Europe. It investigates Hungary to depict the disaggregate nature of liberalization due to elitism and the prioritization of economic liberalization. Despite the favorable historical circumstances in Hungary, there was no consensus on the virtues of liberalism after 1989. The proponents of liberalism disengaged the public, lost credibility, and failed to convince the public of the advantages of progressive politics and Europeanization. In reaction, conservative populist politics disparages the achievements of both liberalization and Europeanization. Finally, the global economic crisis demonstrates the demise of economic liberalization and puts political liberalization in peril.
The primary goal of the book is to present the ideas and research findings of active researchers from various communities (physicists, economists, mathematicians, financial engineers) working in the field of "Econophysics," who have undertaken the task of modelling and analyzing order-driven markets. Of primary interest in these studies are the mechanisms leading to the statistical regularities ("stylized facts") of price statistics. Results pertaining to other important issues such as market impact, the profitability of trading strategies, or mathematical models for microstructure effects, are also presented. Several leading researchers in these fields report on their recent work and also review the contemporary literature. Some historical perspectives, comments and debates on recent issues in Econophysics research are also included.
Though the emerging sub-discipline of comparative political economy is now rich in studies of different advanced capitalisms, it still lacks a systematic consideration of the organizing frameworks and methodologies underpinning those studies. This definitive volume outlines the two great debates currently shaping the analysis of advanced capitalism. This book makes the case for a greater awareness of underlying theoretical issues in the design of empirical research, and demonstrates the value of exploring the interconnections between competing intellectual approaches.
This book presents an absorbing study of how educational radio, which originated to broadcast weather forecasts to farmers, has become what the Pew Center calls the most trusted source of news for American liberals and a regular in the rogue's gallery of election-year conservative targets.The Nielsen Company reported in late 2019 that 272 million Americans listen to "traditional radio" each week, a number exceeding those who watch television, use a smartphone, or access the Internet. Yet almost from the start, radio has also been flayed as a noise box of inanity, a transmitter of low-brow entertainment, an instrument of cultural degradation promoting vapid popular music, and a medium whose ultimate purpose is to convince listeners to purchase the goods and services incessantly hawked by the advertisers who underwrite the programs and allegedly dictate content. At the same time, an alternative conception of radio existed as a vehicle for education and for cultural and intellectual (and even political) enlightenment. Most proponents of this perspective disdained advertising revenue and sought subsidies from foundations, wealthy patrons, or varying levels of government.The long, winding road of educational radio led eventually to the creation of National Public Radio (NPR), a fixture on the left of the dial that can be seen as either the consummation or corruption of the educational radio movement. Prized by many liberals, especially affluent whites, and disparaged by many conservatives, NPR has become a potent symbol of the political polarization and cultural chasm that now characterizes the American conversation.
The essays in this book examine the role of education and the university in economic development. It is the contention of the contributors that knowledge--ideas and skilled and educated people--are increasingly important for economic development. How to promote inclusive development--the process of development that includes every citizen in any country--has become a wide-ranging puzzle. After framing the problems associated with globally integrated learning processes from the perspective of science and technology policies, the essayists look at the role of the university in the knowledge economy drawing examples from the United States, Japan, and Portugal. They then review the role of innovation in the industrial policies of a variety of countries, look at systems of knowledge creation and diffusion, and conclude with commentary on the roles of public planning and policy in the achievement of sustainable development. This wide-ranging examination of knowledge and development issues will be of value to scholars, researchers, and policy makers involved with economic growth and development.
Soft computing has provided sophisticated methodologies for the development of intelligent decision support systems. Fast advances in soft computing technologies, such as fuzzy logic and systems, artificial neural networks and evolutionary computation, have made available powerful problem representation and modelling paradigms, and learning and optimisation mechanisms for addressing modern decision making issues. This book provides a comprehensive coverage of up-to-date conceptual frameworks in broadly perceived decision support systems and successful applications. Different from other existing books, this volume predominately focuses on applied decision support with soft computing. Areas covered include planning, management finance and administration in both the private and public sectors.
Professor McKenzie proposes and formulates a method composed of operational procedures designed to facilitate the evaluation of economic projects and policies. This method is discussed fully, illustrated by simple examples, and compared with alternative procedures. An outline of a computer program that enables readers to undertake their own calculations is included. In order to present the approach clearly, the author provides an exposition of the fundamental ideas and the main alternative approaches to the problem. These rely on various forms of index numbers and consumer surplus. However, as is well known, such measures are not capable of correctly ordering the various alternatives under consideration, except under highly unrealist assumptions. In this book the author suggests the abandonment of this traditional approach based on the concept of 'willingness-to-pay' or the conpensating variation. Instead, the measure that Samuelson has called the 'money-metric' should become the cornerstone of applied welfare economics.
This volume of essays contains 16 papers the author has written over the last 40 years on various aspects of the life and work of John Maynard Keynes and Nicholas Kaldor. It covers both theoretical and applied topics and highlight the continued relevance of Keynesian and Kaldorian ideas for understanding the functioning of capitalist economies.
This book gathers carefully selected works in Mathematical Economics, on myriad topics including General Equilibrium, Game Theory, Economic Growth, Welfare, Social Choice Theory, Finance. It sheds light on the ongoing discussions that have brought together leading researchers from Latin America and Southern Europe at recent conferences in venues like Porto, Portugal; Athens, Greece; and Guanajuato, Mexico. With this volume, the editors not only contribute to the advancement of research in these areas, but also inspire other scholars around the globe to collaborate and research these vibrant, emerging topics.
This book develops a comprehensive systematic economic theory, conceiving how the dynamic of market relations generates an economy dominated by the competitive process of individual profit-seeking enterprises. The author shows how, contrary to classical political economy and contemporary economics, the theory of capital is an a priori normative account properly belonging to ethics. Exposing and overcoming the limits of the economic conceptions of Hegel and Marx, Rethinking Capital determines how the system of capitals shapes economic freedom, jeopardizing the very rights in whose exercise it consists. Winfield thereby provides the understanding required to guide the private and public interventions with which capitalism can be given a human face.
This work on microeconomics offers interpretations of both its strengths and its weaknesses. It shows how the general equilibrium ideas of Walras and Marshall were gradually transformed after 1930 into formalized accounts of imaginary economies where trading never occurs.
This work publishes for the first time Richard T. Ely's study of the history of American economic thought. Ely was both a reformer of economics and a leading economist between the 1880's and 1930's. A founder of the American economic association, he himself wrote on a vast number of topics. This history of American economics tells a story that is both straightforward and his own interpretation.
The cognitive sciences, having emerged in the second half of the
twentieth century, are recently experiencing a spectacular renewal
which cannot leave unaffected any discipline that deals with human
behavior. The primary motivation for our project has been to weigh
up the impact that this ongoing revolution of the sciences of the
mind is likely to have on social sciences in particular, on
economics. The idea was to gather together a diverse group of
social scientists to think about the following questions. Have the
various new approaches to cognition provoked a crisis in economic
science? Should we speak of a scientific revolution in economics
occurring under the growing influence of the cognitive paradigm?
Above all, can a more precise knowledge of the complex functioning
of the human mind and brain advance in any way the understanding of
economic decision-making?
Until now, Friedrich Nietzsche's influence on the development of modern social sciences has not been well documented. This volume reconsiders some of Nietzsche's writings on economics and the science of state and in doing so pioneers a line of research not previously available in English. Here, twelve scholars consider Nietzsche's historical and contemporary relevance, which has ranged from the highly serious (Schumpeter writings on creative destruction) to the pop cultural (the early works of Ayn Rand). Several papers present strong evidence of Nietzsche as an influencer of modern economists; others see him more as an influencer of influencers; and one sees little influence at all. Most of the contributions refer extensively to works previous unpublished (or poorly translated) in English. The editors do not intend to present a thorough overview or definitive description of Nietzsche's place in economics. Rather, they hope to initiate conversations and research that explore the role this much misunderstood philosopher/cultural critic may have played, or perhaps should play, in the history of economic thought.
Pathology of the Capitalist Spirit is about capital and about the economic system that bears its name. In this book, Levine argues that our pursuit of ever-more wealth in the form of capital expresses our dissatisfaction with the world we live in, with what we have and what we don't have. Capital embodies our hope for something different. Because capital embodies this hope, it has become desire's object. In his study of capitalism, Levine explores the meaning of capital as a social reality connected to fundamental human aspirations. The link between capital and the pursuit of a hoped-for state is especially important in light of the stubborn insistence on the part of its critics that capitalism exists to serve the material interests of those whose vocation is to own capital. This misunderstanding ignores what is essential about capital, which is its link not to interests but to hope, especially the hope that by accumulating capital the individual can achieve an attachment to the good. It is this hope that blocks tolerance of any notion that there is something unfair in the capitalist's acquisition of wealth and that fairness can be achieved through its redistribution to others. It is also this hope that animates the capitalist system as a whole. And in that sense, this hope is the spirit of capitalism. To develop this theme, Levine calls on the ideas and writings of major theorists involved with understanding modernity and capitalism: Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, and Joseph Schumpeter.
One of the major controversies in macroeconomics over the last 30 years has been that on the effectiveness of stabilization policies. However, this debate, between those who believe that this kind of policies is useless if not harmful and those who argue in favor of it, has been mainly theoretical so far. The Rational Expectation Hypothesis, Time-Varying Parameters and Adaptive Control wants to represent a step toward the construction of a common ground on which to empirically compare the two "beliefs" and to do this three strands of literature are brought together. The first strand is the research on time-varying parameters (TVP), the second strand is the work on adaptive control and the third one is the literature on linear stationary models with rational expectations (RE). The material presented in The Rational Expectation Hypothesis, Time-Varying Parameters and Adaptive Control is divided into two parts. Part 1 combines the strand of literature on adaptive control with that on TVP. It generalizes the approach pioneered by Tse and Bar-Shalom (1973) and Kendrick (1981) and one recently used in Amman and Kendrick (2002), where the law of motion of the TVP and the hyperstructural parameters are assumed known, to the case where the hyperstructural parameters are assumed unknown. Part 2 is devoted to the linear single-equation stationary RE model estimated with the error-in-variables (EV) method. It presents a new formulation of this problem based on the use of TVP in an EV model. This new formulation opens the door to a very promising development. All the theory developed in the first part to control a model with TVP can sic et simpliciter be applied to control a model with RE.
This book, a second edition, includes new data from the 2010 Census of India and NSS reports on consumer expenditure (2011-12), health and education (2014) to examine poverty in China and India, and how it connects with minorities. Poverty has generally become less acute in both China and India, thanks to an impressively rapid growth especially between 2010 and 2015 when the rest of the world including the US and the EU slowed down following the economic recession of 2008. But the issues of income and non-income inequalities (especially malnutrition in India), marginalization and social exclusion remain as acute as ever in both countries. As well as the use of new primary material in every chapter, the book also critically examines new relevant studies and responds to global perspectives on minority issues. It canvasses a broad range of subjects from global terrorism and civil wars in Libya and Syria, to the Arab Spring and the emergence of Islamic fundamentalism and the Islamic State (ISIS).
The new research method presented in this book ensures that all economic theories are falsifiable and that irrefutable theories are scientifically sound. Figueroa combines the logically consistent aspects of Popperian and process epistemologies in his alpha-beta method to address the widespread problem of too-general empirical research methods used in economics. He argues that scientific rules can be applied to economics to make sense of society, but that they must address the complexity of reality as well as the simplicity of the abstract on which hard sciences can rely. Furthermore, because the alpha-beta method combines approaches to address the difficulties of scientifically analyzing complex society, it also extends to other social sciences that have historically relied on empirical methods. This groundbreaking Pivot is ideal for students and researchers dedicated to promoting the progress of scientific research in all social sciences.
This volume addresses fundamental issues in the philosophy of science in the context of two most intriguing fields: biology and economics. Written by authorities and experts in the philosophy of biology and economics, "Mechanism and Causality in Biology and Economics" provides a structured study of the concepts of mechanism and causality in these disciplines and draws careful juxtapositions between philosophical apparatus and scientific practice. By exploring the issues that are most salient to the contemporary philosophies of biology and economics and by presenting comparative analyses, the book serves as a platform not only for gaining mutual understanding between scientists and philosophers of the life sciences and those of the social sciences, but also for sharing interdisciplinary research that combines both philosophical concepts in both fields. The book begins by defining the concepts of mechanism and causality in biology and economics, respectively. The second and third parts investigate philosophical perspectives of various causal and mechanistic issues in scientific practice in the two fields. These two sections include chapters on causal issues in the theory of evolution; experiments and scientific discovery; representation of causal relations and mechanism by models in economics. The concluding section presents interdisciplinary studies of various topics concerning extrapolation of life sciences and social sciences, including chapters on the philosophical investigation of conjoining biological and economic analyses with, respectively, demography, medicine and sociology.
Henry George's political economy has been hailed as one of the great contributions of American social criticism. His writings have, however, invited interpretation in contradictory fashion. Commentaries have used him to uphold laissez-faire social Darwinism allowing for the aggrandizement of money. Some on the left have regarded his ideology as calling for a co-operative commonwealth well beyond the intentions of the single-tax mechanism. And there are those who see him as having, in effect, written a new Declaration of Independence as powerful as that of 1776. Bringing to light his previously unavailable British writings would clear up some misunderstandings and also present the man and his ideas in a fresher historical context.
In August 2005, a small but important conference took place at Chuo University in Tokyo, Japan. The Chuo Meeting on Economics of Time and Space 2005 (Chuo METS 05) aimed to enrich the respective disciplines of the economics of time (dynamic economics) and the economics of space (spatial economics) and to expand their applicability in the real world. The chapters contained herein are based on the papers presented at that conference.
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. In October 2019, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer jointly won the 51st Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty." But what is the exact scope of their experimental method, known as randomized control trials (RCTs)? Which sorts of questions are RCTs able to address and which do they fail to answer? The first of its kind, Randomized Control Trials in the Field of Development: A Critical Perspective provides answers to these questions, explaining how RCTs work, what they can achieve, why they sometimes fail, how they can be improved and why other methods are both useful and necessary. Bringing together leading specialists in the field from a range of backgrounds and disciplines (economics, econometrics, mathematics, statistics, political economy, socioeconomics, anthropology, philosophy, global health, epidemiology, and medicine), it presents a full and coherent picture of the main strengths and weaknesses of RCTs in the field of development. Looking beyond the epistemological, political, and ethical differences underlying many of the disagreements surrounding RCTs, it explores the implementation of RCTs on the ground, outside of their ideal theoretical conditions and reveals some unsuspected uses and effects, their disruptive potential, but also their political uses. The contributions uncover the implicit worldview that many RCTs draw on and disseminate, and probe the gap between the method's narrow scope and its success, while also proposing improvements and alternatives. Without disputing the contribution of RCTs to scientific knowledge, Randomized Control Trials in the Field of Development warns against the potential dangers of their excessive use, arguing that the best use for RCTs is not necessarily that which immediately springs to mind. Written in plain language, this book offers experts and laypeople alike a unique opportunity to come to an informed and reasoned judgement on RCTs and what they can bring to development.
This title offers an in-depth analysis of the causes, consequences and treatments of illicit drug abuse. The author examines the effects of existing drug policies and proposes drug use legalisation within a regulated market as a viable alternative. Joshua assesses the factors that make individuals vulnerable to drug abuse and the pathways they may follow. As well as exploring the physical and psychological effects on the individual, Joshua examines the social and economic consequences for society. He highlights the pitfalls of a purely legal approach to drug abuse, which is primarily a health matter, and questions whether special drugs courts could be used as an alternative to the present criminal justice system. This book adds to the debate on whether most drugs could be sold in a regulated market in the same way as other drugs are, such as alcohol or nicotine. This is the third title in a four volume series 'The Economics of Addictive Behaviours', consisting of three additional volumes on smoking, alcohol abuse and overeating.
This work xxamines the process by which Keynesianism, with its sympathetic view of the role of government in the economy and society, lost influence amongst economists and policy makers and was replaced by more negative views about government intervention and more positive views about the role of the market as a social organiser.
In this collection, four philosophers and four economists consider the Third Volume of Marx's Capital. The essays take up each of the major themes of Volume III - competition, for formation and development of the general rate of profit, the credit system and finance capital, rent, the Trinity formula and the concept of class - and consider them in the light of the two previous volumes. The authors share a focus on the concept of social form in Marx's work and on the method of his argument. The collection is intended both for specialists in Marxian theory and for students of the history of economic thought and of methodology. |
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