Stephen E. Spear – författare

The three volumes of the "Collected Scientific Works of David Cass" are ordered chronologically, which happens to coincide with the development of the three major advances in Cass' research agenda, the development of the neoclassical growth model, the discovery of sunspot equilibria, and the analysis of models of market incompleteness. This volume consists of Cass' early work from his time in graduate school at Stanford University, studying under Hirofumi Uzawa, and as an assistant professor at Yale's Cowles Commission, and his tenure at Carnegie Mellon University's Graduate School of Industrial Administration. The work in this volume focuses primarily on Cass' contributions to what is now known as the Ramsey-Cass-Kooopmans neoclassical growth model, and the development of what is now known as the Cass criterion for determining whether intertemporal allocations are efficient. This period also includes Cass' early work on overlapping generation's models, asset pricing models, and methodological contributions in dynamic systems applications in economics.

The three volumes of the "The Collected Scientific Works of David Cass" are ordered chronologically, which happens to coincide with the development of the three major advances in Cass' research agenda, the development of the neoclassical growth model, the discovery of sunspot equilibria, and the analysis of models of market incompleteness. This volume consists of the work Cass completed after leaving Carnegie Mellon for the University of Pennsylvania's Economics Department (where he remained for the rest of his career). The work during this period encompasses his well-known collaboration with Karl Shell and Yves Balasko on overlapping generations models, and his development with Karl of the notion of 'sunspot equilibria' - rational expectations equilibria which are essentially self-fulfilling prophecies. This period also saw the beginnings of Cass' pioneering research into the theory of incomplete markets, which grew naturally form his early interest in models of asset pricing, and includes the paper which developed what is now known as the Cass trick for analyzing incomplete markets models.

The three volumes of the "Collected Scientific Works of David Cass" are ordered chronologically, which happens to coincide with the development of the three major advances in Cass' research agenda, the development of the neoclassical growth model, the discovery of sunspot equilibria, and the analysis of models of market incompleteness. This volume covers the period from the middle 1980's through the end of Cass' life in 2008. Cass' research during this period included definitive papers showing that competitive equilibrium is generically indeterminate when markets are incomplete, and on the relationship between market incompleteness and the existence of sunspot equilibrium. This period also saw the follow-on papers addressing the issue of how financial innovation affects economic welfare, showing in particular that innovation can lead to welfare losses as well as gains, depending on the nature of the innovation.

Endogenous Growth traces the intellectual evolution of growth theory, from its formative origins to its modern formalisation. The authors investigate how endogenous growth theory developed alongside the dominant analytical frameworks of dynamic macroeconomics. The book examines why models incorporating imperfect competition, heterogeneous returns, and alternative equilibrium concepts were long overshadowed. Through careful attention to the mathematical foundations—Hamiltonians, dynamic programming, and the shifting conceptualisation of capital—the authors reveal how the field’s trajectory shaped both the promise and the limitations of its models, and why a richer treatment of competition, capital, and equilibrium is essential for understanding long-run growth.This volume of the International Symposia in Economic Theory and Econometrics series fills a conspicuous gap in contemporary macroeconomic pedagogy. By devoting greater space to model exposition, historical context, and dynamic optimization techniques, the authors provide a gentler yet analytically robust pathway into modern mathematical economics. The result is a timely, clarifying work that engages constructively with established literature while offering a complementary framework for understanding the mechanisms that truly drive economic growth.

The 800 pound gorilla in the room of macroeconomics is the question of why the overlapping generations model didn’t become the central workhorse model for macroeconomics. Introduced in 1958 by Paul Samuelson, the model postulates an infinite number of finite-lived families. This is in stark contrast to the more dominant neoclassical growth model, which is based on the assumption that real economies are populated by a finite number of dynastic families. Despite the greater realism of the former model and the inherent implausibility of the assumptions underlying the growth model, the growth model has become dominant. The authors here explore the co-evolution of the two models to shed light on why this happened, spanning the entire post-WWII era.