Mateusz Machaj – författare

Neoclassical economics has been criticized from various angles by orthodox schools. The same can be said about its particular branch: the theory of the firm.

This book demonstrates how a successful theory of the firm can be presented without flawed notions of a neoclassical framework and used to comprehend actual business history. The author argues that we should start from the assumption that businesses are inevitably imponderable, as that is their nature, in the process of economic evolution. The book offers an in-depth exploration of neoclassical limitations by examining each of the small details associated with the famous MR = MC rule. It follows a step-by-step approach, which starts off with neoclassical assumptions and then moves into more empirically sound theory, based on modeling logic and rooted in real world examples. The author presents a novel discussion on the size of the firm, both in terms of classifying a firm’s expansion and about the factors that limit the size of the firm and argues how formal pricing theory can be built using more indeterminate assumptions about firms. Further, there is a discussion on how firms are rooted in amorphous industries, which helps to explain economic progress better by emphasizing the importance of economic experiments, mistakes and bankruptcies.

This is a valuable reference for scholars and researchers who are interested in a range of topics from microeconomics, through pricing theory to industrial organization, history of economic thought and managerial economics.

Neoclassical economics has been criticized from various angles by orthodox schools. The same can be said about its particular branch: the theory of the firm.

This book demonstrates how a successful theory of the firm can be presented without flawed notions of a neoclassical framework and used to comprehend actual business history. The author argues that we should start from the assumption that businesses are inevitably imponderable, as that is their nature, in the process of economic evolution. The book offers an in-depth exploration of neoclassical limitations by examining each of the small details associated with the famous MR = MC rule. It follows a step-by-step approach, which starts off with neoclassical assumptions and then moves into more empirically sound theory, based on modeling logic and rooted in real world examples. The author presents a novel discussion on the size of the firm, both in terms of classifying a firm’s expansion and about the factors that limit the size of the firm and argues how formal pricing theory can be built using more indeterminate assumptions about firms. Further, there is a discussion on how firms are rooted in amorphous industries, which helps to explain economic progress better by emphasizing the importance of economic experiments, mistakes and bankruptcies.

This is a valuable reference for scholars and researchers who are interested in a range of topics from microeconomics, through pricing theory to industrial organization, history of economic thought and managerial economics.

Recent years have seen a return to high inflation that has sparked debate about the causal role of monetary policy in significant price increases, especially in the context of the quantity theory of money. This book builds upon a long-accepted tradition of quantity theory of money in explaining long-run inflation levels.

It elucidates how and why – despite its important limitations – the theory can be applied throughout history, including the 2022 spikes in inflation. It also demonstrates how and why the quantity theory, with some internally good reasons, is not part of the modern monetary policy framework. The book argues that firstly, the issue of non-operationability of the money supply is a policy problem, but not a causality problem. Secondly, while some models can work without money, and while a simple deterministic relationship between money base and aggregates may not exist, the author shows that there is still room for quantity theory to be true. Thirdly, perhaps most importantly, as the book shows, the apparent lack of a relationship between the inflation index and money supply with single-digit inflation is a statistical artifact resulting from confounding factors. To conclude, although the quantity theory of money has not been employed in recent Central bank policy, it still holds up surprisingly well in explaining real world phenomena, including the current record inflation levels.

The practical significance of this book is to illustrate to researchers and scholars how classical macroeconomic thinking can explain key monetary factors that lead to inflation, but also at the same time show that it is fully compatible with modern macroeconomics and is not just a thing of the past.

Recent years have seen a return to high inflation that has sparked debate about the causal role of monetary policy in significant price increases, especially in the context of the quantity theory of money. This book builds upon a long-accepted tradition of quantity theory of money in explaining long-run inflation levels.

It elucidates how and why – despite its important limitations – the theory can be applied throughout history, including the 2022 spikes in inflation. It also demonstrates how and why the quantity theory, with some internally good reasons, is not part of the modern monetary policy framework. The book argues that firstly, the issue of non-operationability of the money supply is a policy problem, but not a causality problem. Secondly, while some models can work without money, and while a simple deterministic relationship between money base and aggregates may not exist, the author shows that there is still room for quantity theory to be true. Thirdly, perhaps most importantly, as the book shows, the apparent lack of a relationship between the inflation index and money supply with single-digit inflation is a statistical artifact resulting from confounding factors. To conclude, although the quantity theory of money has not been employed in recent Central bank policy, it still holds up surprisingly well in explaining real world phenomena, including the current record inflation levels.

The practical significance of this book is to illustrate to researchers and scholars how classical macroeconomic thinking can explain key monetary factors that lead to inflation, but also at the same time show that it is fully compatible with modern macroeconomics and is not just a thing of the past.

The comparative analysis of socialist and capitalist economic systems has given rise to a voluminous literature in the history of economic thought, yet detailed analysis of the “market socialism” model, which seeks to imitate the functional efficiency of capitalism by simulating a competitive economy, has been relatively neglected. In this work, Mateusz Machaj seeks to redress this imbalance by providing an in-depth examination of one of the defining issues that separates capitalism from socialism – the system of ownership, or property rights – which, when explored, highlight fundamental problems in the market socialism model.

Taking a broadly Austrian perspective, he shows that the mechanism of efficiency in market socialism is unable to play the part ascribed to it by its theoreticians, because it disregards the fact that property rights are fundamental to the shaping of prices and thus the abolition of ownership in market socialism makes its mechanism of efficiency a fiction. Indeed, the author argues, the economic terms used in the model of market capitalism only mirror the names of the real economic variables that cause capitalism to be efficient, not their functions.

The books offers new and original insights into the theory of competition, theories of pricing, property laws, the relation between law and economics, as well as the economics of the market socialism model. It will be of interest to a wide range of heterodox economists.