Roberto Scazzieri - Böcker

This book presents a new theoretical framework for the analysis of production processes. It is based on a rigorous reconstruction of the intellectual heritage of economics, but also considers issues traditionally left aside by economists, such as the distinction between three dimensions of the production process (tasks, capabilities, and materials in process), the organizational approach to scale and size, and the idea that different institutional set-ups may be compatible with the same objective standard of efficiency.

In the words of Robert M. Solow traverse analysis "is the easiest part of skiing, but the hardest part of economics". The aim of this volume is to assess the state and scope of modern traverse analysis as it had been initiated by John Hicks in his pioneering contribution Capital and Time (1973). The analysis of an economy which originally had been in a growth equilibrium which was disturbed by technical progress is one of the most challenging problems in economics. This book takes Hicks’ work as the point of departure for theoretical work on the macroeconomic theory of capital dynamics along transition non-steady state pathsThe original contributions in this volume explore the manifold theoretical roots of traverse analysis in classical and post-classical literature, its features as a specific method of economic dynamics, and its applications in a variety of fields from monetary economics to development and international economics. The essays thereby focus on the ways ahead from Capital and Time that have been suggested and actively pursued by a number of scholars in recent years. Its central theme is the role of capital structures as critical factors in determining the actual dynamics of any given economic system. This volume is inspired by the belief that this state of affairs is not a satisfactory one, and outlines a new agenda for capital theory. Contributors include Edwin Burmeister, Jean-Luc Gaffard and Heinz Kurz.

In the words of Robert M. Solow traverse analysis "is the easiest part of skiing, but the hardest part of economics". The aim of this volume is to assess the state and scope of modern traverse analysis as it had been initiated by John Hicks in his pioneering contribution Capital and Time (1973). The analysis of an economy which originally had been in a growth equilibrium which was disturbed by technical progress is one of the most challenging problems in economics. This book takes Hicks’ work as the point of departure for theoretical work on the macroeconomic theory of capital dynamics along transition non-steady state pathsThe original contributions in this volume explore the manifold theoretical roots of traverse analysis in classical and post-classical literature, its features as a specific method of economic dynamics, and its applications in a variety of fields from monetary economics to development and international economics. The essays thereby focus on the ways ahead from Capital and Time that have been suggested and actively pursued by a number of scholars in recent years. Its central theme is the role of capital structures as critical factors in determining the actual dynamics of any given economic system. This volume is inspired by the belief that this state of affairs is not a satisfactory one, and outlines a new agenda for capital theory. Contributors include Edwin Burmeister, Jean-Luc Gaffard and Heinz Kurz.

This volume is inspired by developments in two strands of economic theorising. Firstly, research on structural economic dynamics based on three sources: Hicks' work on traverse analysis, Pasinetti on disproportional growth and Goodwin on dynamic decomposition and economic fluctuations. The second strand goes back to Georgescu-Roegen's interest in an organisational theory of production based upon the interrelationship between tasks, fund factors and material transformations. The approach taken involves a comprehensive view of sub-units of the whole economic system (such as processes, industries, vertically integrated sectors, eigensectors) representing dynamics of structural adaptation and compositional change. Furthermore, a detailed representation of micro-organisational features leads to the analysis of networks and networking processes within and amongst such sub-units.

Sir John Hicks (1904-89) was a leading economic theorist of the twentieth century, and along with Kenneth Arrow was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1972. His work addressed central topics in economic theory, such as value, money, capital and growth. An important unifying theme was the attention for economic rationality 'in time' and his acknowledgement that apparent rigidities and frictions might exert a positive role as a buffer against excessive fluctuations in output, prices and employment. This emphasis on the virtue of imperfection significantly distances Hicksian economics from both the Keynesian and Monetarist approaches. Containing contributions from distinguished theorists in their own right (including three Nobel Prize winners), this volume examines Hicks's intellectual heritage and discusses how his ideas suggest a distinct approach to economic theory and policy making. It will be of great interest to scholars and students of economic theory and the history of economic thought.

This volume is inspired by developments in two strands of economic theorising. Firstly, research on structural economic dynamics based on three sources: Hicks' work on traverse analysis, Pasinetti on disproportional growth and Goodwin on dynamic decomposition and economic fluctuations. The second strand goes back to Georgescu-Roegen's interest in an organisational theory of production based upon the interrelationship between tasks, fund factors and material transformations. The approach taken involves a comprehensive view of sub-units of the whole economic system (such as processes, industries, vertically integrated sectors, eigensectors) representing dynamics of structural adaptation and compositional change. Furthermore, a detailed representation of micro-organisational features leads to the analysis of networks and networking processes within and amongst such sub-units.

Sir John Hicks (1904-89) was a leading economic theorist of the twentieth century, and along with Kenneth Arrow was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1972. His work addressed central topics in economic theory, such as value, money, capital and growth. An important unifying theme was the attention for economic rationality 'in time' and his acknowledgement that apparent rigidities and frictions might exert a positive role as a buffer against excessive fluctuations in output, prices and employment. This emphasis on the virtue of imperfection significantly distances Hicksian economics from both the Keynesian and Monetarist approaches. Containing contributions from distinguished theorists in their own right (including three Nobel Prize winners), this volume examines Hicks's intellectual heritage and discusses how his ideas suggest a distinct approach to economic theory and policy making. It will be of great interest to scholars and students of economic theory and the history of economic thought.

Economists since the First Industrial Revolution have been interested in the links between economic growth and resources, often pointing to resource scarcities as a hindrance to growth. Offering a counter perspective, this volume highlights the positive role that scarcities can play in inducing technical progress and economic growth. It outlines a structural framework for the political economy of scarcity and rents, and offers a novel way of organizing the evidence concerning the role of resources in industrial growth. This book proposes a major shift in the treatment of scarcity issues by focusing on bottlenecks and opportunities arising within the production system, and will appeal to economists and policy makers interested in the role of resources as triggers of structural change.

The Eurozone is not a mere currency area. It is also a unique polity whose actors span multiple levels (supranational, national, regional, sectoral) and pursue overlapping economic and political objectives. Current thinking on the Eurozone relies on received categories that struggle to capture these constitutive features. This book addresses this analytical deficit by proposing a new approach to the political economy of the Eurozone, which captures economic and political interdependencies across different levels of decision making and sheds light on largely unexplored problems. The book explores the opportunities afforded by the structure of the Eurozone, and lays the foundations of a political economy that poses new questions and requires new answers. It provides categories that are firmly grounded in the existing configuration of the Eurozone, but are a precondition for overcoming the status quo in analysis and policy.

This volume, first published in 1991, represents a wide-ranging inquiry into the general field of structural economic analysis and provides a thorough appraisal of the method of economic dynamics. It comprises nine original essays by distinguished scholars, all of which assess different aspects of the concept of economic structure. The analytical contribution of the volume is to draw attention to the relationship between 'horizontal' and 'vertical' treatments of economic structure that have characterized economic theory. The former focuses on the circular character of economic relationships, as exemplified in the Quesnay-Leontief literature, while the latter concentrates on the relationships between the 'fund' of productive resources and the production of finished goods. Perhaps the most important contribution of the volume is to provide a linkage between the two approaches and to put forward a new conceptual framework that combines an appreciation for the importance of technical relationships with a recognition of the institutional arrangements in the economic system.

Economists since the First Industrial Revolution have been interested in the links between economic growth and resources, often pointing to resource scarcities as a hindrance to growth. Offering a counter perspective, this volume highlights the positive role that scarcities can play in inducing technical progress and economic growth. It outlines a structural framework for the political economy of scarcity and rents, and offers a novel way of organizing the evidence concerning the role of resources in industrial growth. This book proposes a major shift in the treatment of scarcity issues by focusing on bottlenecks and opportunities arising within the production system, and will appeal to economists and policy makers interested in the role of resources as triggers of structural change.

The Eurozone is not a mere currency area. It is also a unique polity whose actors span multiple levels (supranational, national, regional, sectoral) and pursue overlapping economic and political objectives. Current thinking on the Eurozone relies on received categories that struggle to capture these constitutive features. This book addresses this analytical deficit by proposing a new approach to the political economy of the Eurozone, which captures economic and political interdependencies across different levels of decision making and sheds light on largely unexplored problems. The book explores the opportunities afforded by the structure of the Eurozone, and lays the foundations of a political economy that poses new questions and requires new answers. It provides categories that are firmly grounded in the existing configuration of the Eurozone, but are a precondition for overcoming the status quo in analysis and policy.

The two dominant conceptions of political economy are based on either reducing political decisions to rational-choice reasoning or, conversely, reducing economic structures and phenomena to the realm of politics. In this book, Adrian Pabst and Roberto Scazzieri contend that neither conception is convincing and argue for a fundamental rethinking of political economy. Developing a new approach at the interface of economic theory and political thought, the book shows that political economy covers a plurality of dimensions, which reflect internal hierarchies and multiple relationships within the economic and political sphere. The Constitution of Political Economy presents a new, richer conception of political economy that draws on a range of thinkers from the history of political economy, recognising the complex embedding of the economy and the polity in society. Effective policy-making has to reflect this embedding and rests on the interdependence between local, national, and international actors to address multiple systemic crises.

The two dominant conceptions of political economy are based on either reducing political decisions to rational-choice reasoning or, conversely, reducing economic structures and phenomena to the realm of politics. In this book, Adrian Pabst and Roberto Scazzieri contend that neither conception is convincing and argue for a fundamental rethinking of political economy. Developing a new approach at the interface of economic theory and political thought, the book shows that political economy covers a plurality of dimensions, which reflect internal hierarchies and multiple relationships within the economic and political sphere. The Constitution of Political Economy presents a new, richer conception of political economy that draws on a range of thinkers from the history of political economy, recognising the complex embedding of the economy and the polity in society. Effective policy-making has to reflect this embedding and rests on the interdependence between local, national, and international actors to address multiple systemic crises.

This book is a major contribution to the study of political economy. With chapters ranging from the origins of political economy to its most exciting research fields, this handbook provides a reassessment of political economy as it stands today, whilst boldly gesturing to where it might head in the future.

This volume broadens our concept of reasoning and rationality to allow for a more pluralistic and situational view of human thinking as a practical activity. Drawing on contributors across disciplines including philosophy, economics, psychology, statistics, computer science, engineering, and physics, "Reasoning, Rationality, and Probability" argues that the search for strong theories should leave room for the construction of context-sensitive conceptual tools. Both science and everyday life, the authors argue, are too complex and multifaceted to be forced into ready-made schemata.

The aim of Albert Aftalion’s Periodic Crises of Overproduction is to lay the analytical building blocks of a medium-term approach to the theory and policy of economic fluctuations. Aftalion builds his theory on a disaggregated (structural) representation of the economic system that overcomes the conventional micro-macro dichotomy. This analysis eschews both the explanation of crises in terms of cumulative processes triggered by long-term factors and that in terms of purely contingent mismatches and ruptures. Aftalion highlights features such as lack of synchronization between sectors, different time horizons between socio-economic groups, and dissimilar speeds of change between production and consumption units. His approach draws key analytical concepts (such as the accelerator principle) from a detailed investigation of the interdependencies and temporal asymmetries of an industrial economy. It is an enlightening complement to Keynes’ General Theory.

Knowledge, Social Institutions and the Division of Labour gives rise to a new and richer institutional analysis of the economy centred around the analysis of language, the division of labour and social knowledge. It is in this perspective that the economic analysis of institutions comes to be associated with the study of civil society, or with the broad framework of communication and coordination behind the interaction of individuals in economic and non-economic spheres.This fascinating book is divided into three parts beginning with the issue of the development of science as an aspect of the division of labour, starting from methodological problems on the communication of scientific knowledge. The volume goes on to explore issues on the moral bases of social interaction and, more particularly, of commercial society before ending with in depth analyses of questions on the division of labour, social institutions and the diffusion of knowledge in society.

Structural change analysis has been a distinctive feature of economics since its formative period. This authoritative three-volume collection presents a comprehensive selection of the key contributions to the topic.The Economics of Structural Change shows the central role that compositional dynamics plays in the analysis of fluctuations, development, employment and economy-environment interactions. Volume I covers concepts and theories in the economics of structural change; Volume II includes specific contributions to structural theories of growth, cycles and technological change; Volume III focuses on specific areas in the empirics of structural change analysis.This important three-volume set will be indispensable to researchers and practitioners alike.

This book explores an evolutionary theory of scientific knowledge, and provides the basis for a new linguistic approach to methodology.Including an original essay by the late Thomas Kuhn, this volume takes inspiration from his work in history and the philosophy of sciences. The authors highlight the critical importance of the relationship between the process of learning a language and translation, and use this to examine scientific language and interpretation. They also analyse the relationship between grammatical structure and theoretical communication in science and apply their findings to the rhetoric of Smith and Keynes. They assess the pragmatical dimension of language in the construction of knowledge, and examine its role in explaining economic behaviour and in interpreting the relationship between economics and philosophy. Finally, the authors analyse the relationship between incommensurable standards and translation from the point of view of the logical structure of lexicon, and examine the traditional theme of the 'unity of science' across the whole spectrum of humanities and the social sciences.