Donald W. Katzner – författare

This book tells the story of an academic department that underwent rapid, wrenching changes at a time and in a place that one would not have expected them to have occurred. The time was the late 1960s through the 1970s and the place was a public university heavily dependent on state funding. The Cold War was raging, the US public was fearful of communism and the Soviet Union, and politicians were speaking to these fears for political ends. The economics department at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst was in turmoil. In this environment a significant proportion of the department's visible faculty of traditional economists was rapidly created and in spite of the anti-Marxist political climate and the dependence of the university on state politicians for funding, was quickly replaced by a significant visible group of Marxian economists. This book covers the particulars of the background for these events relating to the University of Massachusetts, the political activism of the period, and the state of the economics profession. It describes the events themselves in considerable detail, the multi-year turmoil within the economics department associated with them, the eventual resolution of that turmoil into an intellectually exciting and friendly atmosphere, the significance of the events in terms of academic endeavor, and their legacy for the economics profession.

There is a common view among many economists that one model is capable of explaining a specific type of behaviour in all cultural environments. It is only necessary to make appropriate adjustments to bring the model in line with prevailing cultural conditions. This book argues that such an approach can lead to error, in particular to incorrect explanation and understanding of the phenomenon in question, and therefore may result in inappropriate policy recommendations.Katzner’s fascinating book compares the two cultures of Japan and USA and provides insights into the economic workings and differences between the two nations. He shows that an understanding of the culture of a country is essential to the development of appropriate models of economic behaviour of economic agents in that country, and that the failure to understand cultural differences weakens the predictive (and prescriptive) power of economic models. The argument is made in a collection of essays supporting the following: (a) Thought processes are heavily dependent on cultural environments and (b) Because cultures vary widely from society to society, to explain economic behaviour in one society may require a model with a completely different structure from that in another. The book applies this argument to elucidate certain features of economic theorizing and to explain the so-called Japanese economic miracle.

There is a common view among many economists that one model is capable of explaining a specific type of behaviour in all cultural environments. It is only necessary to make appropriate adjustments to bring the model in line with prevailing cultural conditions. This book argues that such an approach can lead to error, in particular to incorrect explanation and understanding of the phenomenon in question, and therefore may result in inappropriate policy recommendations.Katzner’s fascinating book compares the two cultures of Japan and USA and provides insights into the economic workings and differences between the two nations. He shows that an understanding of the culture of a country is essential to the development of appropriate models of economic behaviour of economic agents in that country, and that the failure to understand cultural differences weakens the predictive (and prescriptive) power of economic models. The argument is made in a collection of essays supporting the following: (a) Thought processes are heavily dependent on cultural environments and (b) Because cultures vary widely from society to society, to explain economic behaviour in one society may require a model with a completely different structure from that in another. The book applies this argument to elucidate certain features of economic theorizing and to explain the so-called Japanese economic miracle.

The Walrasian Vision of the Microeconomy articulates the traditional vision that is conjured up in the minds of most contemporary economists as they contemplate the microeconomy. It does so by setting out a very simple general-equilibrium model containing 1 produced consumer good, 1 produced capital good, 2 factors, 2 consumers, and 2 firms. Most of the basic theoretical ingredients of perfect competition taught in microeconomic theory courses are geometrically developed in this context: market equilibrium, the derivation of consumer demand for goods and supply of factors from constrained utility maximization, the relation between cost and production functions, the derivation of firm output supply and input demand from profit maximization, and the connections between competitive equilibrium, Pareto optimality, and welfare maximization. Also included is an elementary geometric proof of the existence and uniqueness of competitive equilibrium. The underlying premise is that these elements are all components of a larger picture and, as a result, fit together into a unified whole. The book is ideally suited to accompany the fuller and more detailed expositions of standard microeconomic theory texts.

In plying their trade, social scientists often are confronted with significant phenomena that appear incapable of measurement. Past practice would suggest that the way to deal with these cases is to work harder at finding appropriate measures so that standard quantitative analysis can still be applied. Professor Katzner's approach, however is quite different. Rather than concentrating on the construction of measures, he raises the question of how such phenomena can be investigated and understood in the absence of numerical gauges to represent them.

The purpose of this book is to demonstrate that it is possible to do meaningful, significant, and sophisticated analysis in social science when the variables under consideration are, given present knowledge, incapable of measurement. No effort to "measure" the unmeasurable is attempted. Rather, techniques for model building, such as the construction of simultaneous and periodic relation systems that do not require the existence of measures are explored. In addition to presenting a methodology enabling the investigator to deal with the unmeasured, many examples are provided that illustrate how those methods may actually be used. In addition, the book addresses the following: Where has the overwhelming focus on the quantitative (often to the exclusion of the unmeasurable or qualitative) in social science in particular, and in modern societies in general, come from? How can the use of the formalizations of model building, both in the presence and absence of measurement, be justified in social science?What are the dangers of using proxy variables in general in the construction of models, and what are the dangers of treating variables that are only ordinally gauged as if they were cardinally or intervally measured? Finally, when only ordinal calibrations of some variables are available, what analytical methods may legitimately be employed to deal with them?

This book provides a practitioner's foundation for the process of explanatory model building, breaking down that process into five stages. Donald W. Katzner presents a concrete example with unquantified variable values to show how the five-stage procedure works. He describes what is involved in explanatory model building for those interested in this practice, while simultaneously providing a guide for those actually engaged in it. The combination of Katzner's focus on modeling and on mathematics, along with his focus on the explanatory performance of modeling, promises to become an important contribution to the field.

I have three reasons for bringing out the ensuing collection of essays. First, since analysis without measurement (this is generally not the same thing as what is commonly referred to as "qualitative methods" or "qualitative research" in the social science literature) is a relatively new scholarly endeavor, I am striving to enhance its visibility by attracting a wider audience than what would normally be possible with single, narrowly-focused essays published in scat­ tered journals. Second, several of these essays may, in the minds of potential readers, appear to have been published in places that, if not obscure, are at least inconvenient to locate. Collecting them in a single anthology, then, will help to increase their accessibility. Third, I am trying to suggest, as strongly as I can, that analysis without measurement is a viable intellectual enterprise that ought to be taken seriously in social science. This last point will clearly be en­ hanced if the whole that follows turns out, as I hope and suspect it does, to be greater than the sum of its parts. All the same, each reader will have to judge for himself or herself the extent to which I have, through the present collection, successfully made the case for taking up analysis without measurement. The partitioning of these essays into two groups is somewhat, though by no means completely arbitrary.

Donald W. Katzner explores concepts, their properties, and the implications of those properties that underlie many of the current approaches to the economics of firm organization. The book examines these matters in important new ways and in ways that have not been fully considered in the existing literature.Topics covered include authority structures, the social interaction (including supervision) among employees required to fulfill the responsibilities of their jobs, participatory decision making to the extent that it occurs, the impact of time, and certain kinds of complexity and efficiency, all of which are fundamental to analyses of the internal organization of the economic firm. The author provides a clear and extensive presentation of the basic ideas, and examines how they relate to the firm’s operation and profitability. He also develops and employs measures of the dimensions of pyramidal authority structures and analyzes the relationship between them.This book should be of interest to graduate students and scholars interested in the economic fundamentals of firm organization. It is relevant for an introductory graduate course in organization theory in economics departments and business schools. It will also appeal to scholars in such fields as sociology and psychology who work in organization theory from the perspective of their own disciplines.

In this carefully articulated investigation of the Walrasian general equilibrium model, the author sets forth one perception or explanation of how the microeconomy might operate. The focus is primarily on the behavior of individual consumers, firms and markets under perfectly competitive conditions and on the simultaneous interactions that occur among them. Central to his argument is that all of these elements fit together to form a unified whole for a complete, consistent, and cohesive picture of the perfectly competitive microeconomy.The book provides substantial discussion of the model's methodological background; returns to scale; the transformation surface and the fixed-factor-supply economy; existence, uniqueness, and stability of equilibria; the dynamics of market adjustments; methodological individualism and the theory of price determination; imperfectly competitive markets; welfare economics; and the role of money capital in the operation of the firm. The author suggests that the abandonment of general equilibrium theory by microeconomists is a mistake, and that it is too soon to give up on the possibility of constructing an adequate analysis of uniqueness, global stability, and price determination.Students and scholars of economics will find much of interest in this thorough exploration of the operation of the microeconomy.