Economists need to understand some fundamental aspects of science in order to measure and analyse the process of technological change. This book explores the interrelationships between economics, science and technology in order to find ways of improving economists' approaches to technical change. Dr Payson begins by offering a scientific critique of economic discourse and presents a unique, unconstrained and critical view of the behavioral differences between economists and scientists. The economic literature on technological change is analysed in order to assess economists' approach to science. The author then offers concrete solutions for the useful economic study of technological change including alternative methods of classifying data based on scientific principles, a characteristics approach to measuring physical capital, and a futuristic exploration into how artificial intelligence may improve economics.

The concept of quality measurement is revived and given new meaning in this innovative new book. Steven Payson argues that quality measurement is an important issue in the study of price indices and in the additional areas of product innovation and evolutionary change. The user-value definition of quality is forcefully defended against the producer-cost definition, and a new method of measurement is introduced - the representative good approach (RGA). The RGA provides a new means for measuring quality over long periods of time by examining historical documents. A discussion of evolutionary change lays the groundwork for the identification of two processes: quality improvement and cost reduction. Using data from the Sears Catalog, quality improvement and cost reduction rates are estimated for five goods between 1928 and 1993: shoes, sofas, gas ranges, window fans and air conditioners, and cameras. The results are dramatic, supporting ground-breaking hypotheses on the determinants of quality improvement and cost reduction.

This book provides an eye-opening expose on economics professors that will surely shock anyone who is not familiar with the topic, and even some of those who are familiar with it. It is critical of the behavior of economics professors, but is not critical of the field of economics itself. In fact, the book argues that it is essential for economics professors to improve in the work they perform, precisely because of the vital importance of their field. Other books that criticize economics professors typically present complex arguments that interest only the most advanced scholars. However, this book is completely different. It is written to be understandable to anyone who has with an interest in economics, regardless of their background. At the same time, the book does include the most relevant scholarly arguments-it just presents them in a manner that allows anyone to understand them. Also unlike other books on economics, How Economics Professors Can Stop Failing Us is written in the context of a genuine expose. As such, it ventures "backstage" behind the "show business" that has dominated the profession, revealing the profession's deep, dark, (and at times rather ugly) secrets. The book is able to do this by having an author who has experienced first- hand, studied, and written on this topic area for over three decades, who has organized training seminars on it, and who has served for over a decade as the Executive Director of the Association for Integrity and Responsible Leadership in Economics. While exposing the profession's shameful problems, the book also offers great hope in providing realistic solutions to them. One of the main solutions it proposes is for economics professors who are now failing us to follow, and learn from, those other professors who are not failing us-who have, instead, admirably upheld the principles of professional ethics and scientific integrity. In this sense, How Economics Professors Can Stop Failing Us offers the most hope, and perhaps the only hope, for economics professors to improve, and to play the responsible role that their students, their employers, and society overall, expects of them.

The number of economics professors now teaching at universities will decline substantially over the next couple of decades. This will happen for one main reason-the advent of distance learning, especially in the form of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), which enable a single professor to lecture to tens of thousands of students. Other academic fields will undoubtedly encounter similar reductions in their numbers of professors. However, as this book argues at several levels, academic economics is the one profession that is most qualified to study and address the topic. In this sense it is the one profession that should best recognize the economic benefits of this transition, which this book describes, and take responsibility for leading the transition among all academic fields. Unfortunately, the position espoused by several academic economists has been against this inevitable transition-a position that politically upholds their employment and the status of their institutions. They have asserted that MOOCs lower the quality of education and threaten the financial viability of traditional universities. Based on extensive evidence and analysis, however, this book argues that their position untenable. Their position is hypocritical as well, given the fact that economics professors, more than anyone else, have upheld the idea that jobs should be lost, and new ones should be gained, in response to technological changes that promote economic efficiency. There is also irony in the fact that the high tuitions required to maintain traditional classrooms effectively deny a college education to those who cannot afford it. Thus, unsound arguments that traditional lectures are needed to preserve the quality of education actually do not improve the quality of education but have the only real effect of denying education to many people who would otherwise be able to receive it. To address this topic comprehensively, the book goes deep into fundamental questions about what economics professors really do with their time and energy, and what they should be doing in the best interests of their students and of society. These are areas that the profession has needed to address for a long time, but has failed to do so.