Harvey Leibenstein – författare

The latest volume in the Economic Development Series, edited by Gerald M. Meier, this path-breaking book will be greeted with interest by development economists everywhere. Restructuring microeconomic theory in terms of psychological concepts, Professor Leibenstein here applies his innovative theory of individual effort, and the determinants of the relative internal efficiency of the firm or X-efficiency, to economic development problems. He is thus able to evaluate the ways in which human inputs effect economic development. Since individuals, rather than groups, are his basic unit of study, the concept of discovery effort enters into the analysis of such issues as how effectively the individual performs and how his input is utilized by the organization, how it influences X-inefficiency in the public corporation, how quickly new and profitable techniques are adopted, and how market imperfections effect entrepreneurship and related economic activities. Of great significance to economic development, these questions cannot be handled, or handled as well, by conventional microeconomic theory.

The latest volume in the Economic Development Series, edited by Gerald M. Meier, this path-breaking book will be greeted with interest by development economists everywhere. Restructuring microeconomic theory in terms of psychological concepts, Professor Leibenstein here applies his innovative theory of individual effort, and the determinants of the relative internal efficiency of the firm or X-efficiency, to economic development problems. He is thus able to evaluate the ways in which human inputs effect economic development. Since individuals, rather than groups, are his basic unit of study, the concept of discovery effort enters into the analysis of such issues as how effectively the individual performs and how his input is utilized by the organization, how it influences X-inefficiency in the public corporation, how quickly new and profitable techniques are adopted, and how market imperfections effect entrepreneurship and related economic activities. Of great significance to economic development, these questions cannot be handled, or handled as well, by conventional microeconomic theory.

Harvey Leibenstein has written a major new book in microeconomic theory. It is a sophisticated reorientation of microtheory that breaks away from the conventional, highly refined neoclassical theory, which in turn is in the direct line of descent from Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations (1776). The author accomplishes this feat by introducing modern psychological concepts to microtheory, by using individuals instead of collections of individuals as his basic units of study, and by suggesting that relating the theory to the concept of effort (an X-efficiency factor) will provide the most significant results. His innovative central variable, effort, is an X factor, he reminds us, because of its relatively unknown character in affecting output. Basically this leads to a new mode of thinking about economic problems in which the optimizing assumption of standard theory becomes a special extreme case. The X-efficiency factors—motivation, effort, and so on—allow for a restatement of microtheory. and for new applications and new conclusions: (1) businesses do not minimize costs or maximize profits; (2) actual productivity is very far from optimal even under conditions that approximate competition; (3) current modes of regulating monopolistic industries are apt to be inefficient at the expense of the consumer. Lebenstein’s new theory also has practical applications for the problems faced by management of businesses in the private or public sector, and in the fiscal affairs of the nation. When the theory is applied to inflation — one salient and timely example — it leads to results implying that inflation may be a cause of unemployment rather than an influence that reduces unemployment.

First published in 1980, Inflation, Income Distribution and X-Efficiency Theory presents an exploratory theoretical study of the linkages between income distribution, the degree of X-efficiency, and inflation and the level of employment in the context of developing society. It discusses themes like concept of income distribution; maximization versus non-maximization models; theory of inert areas; microtheory and inflation; monopoly and X-Efficiency theory; contracts, bargaining and inflation; theory of bargaining; survival strategies in the face of inflation; and policy implications of inflation. This book is a must read for students and scholars of macroeconomics and economics in general.