Truman F. Bewley – författare

The Econometric Society holds a World Congress every five years. The programme of these congresses has traditionally included a series of invited symposia, where speakers survey important recent advances in economic theory and econometrics. These two volumes, with their focus on econometrics, and their companion volume on economic theory, contain papers delivered at the Fifth World Congress held in 1985. Designed to make material accessible to a general audience of economists, these papers should be helpful to anyone with training in economics who wishes to follow ideas and tendencies in the subject. Advances in Econometrics: Fifth World Congress, Volumes I and II, edited by Professor Truman F. Bewley of Yale University, include a wide variety of topics, comprising empirical and policy oriented subjects as well as theoretical and methodological ones.

The Econometric Society holds a World Congress every five years. The programme of these congresses has traditionally included a series of invited symposia, where speakers survey important recent advances in economic theory and econometrics. These two volumes, with their focus on econometrics, and their companion volume on economic theory, contain papers delivered at the Fifth World Congress held in 1985. Designed to make material accessible to a general audience of economists, these papers should be helpful to anyone with training in economics who wishes to follow new ideas and tendencies in the subject. Advances in Econometrics: Fifth World Congress, Volumes I & II, edited by Professor Truman F. Bewley of Yale University, include a wide variety of topics, comprising empirical and policy oriented subjects as well as theoretical and methodological ones.

A deep question in economics is why wages and salaries don't fall during recessions. This is not true of other prices, which adjust relatively quickly to reflect changes in demand and supply. Although economists have posited many theories to account for wage rigidity, none is satisfactory. Eschewing "top-down" theorizing, Truman Bewley explored the puzzle by interviewing—during the recession of the early 1990s—over three hundred business executives and labor leaders as well as professional recruiters and advisors to the unemployed. By taking this approach, gaining the confidence of his interlocutors and asking them detailed questions in a nonstructured way, he was able to uncover empirically the circumstances that give rise to wage rigidity. He found that the executives were averse to cutting wages of either current employees or new hires, even during the economic downturn when demand for their products fell sharply. They believed that cutting wages would hurt morale, which they felt was critical in gaining the cooperation of their employees and in convincing them to internalize the managers' objectives for the company. Bewley's findings contradict most theories of wage rigidity and provide fascinating insights into the problems businesses face that prevent labor markets from clearing.

This book presents an original exposition of general equilibrium theory for advanced undergraduate and graduate-level students of economics. It contains detailed discussions of economic efficiency, competitive equilibrium, the first and second welfare theorems, the Kuhn-Tucker approach to general equilibrium, the Arrow-Debreu model, and rational expectations equilibrium and the permanent income hypothesis. Truman Bewley also treats optimal growth and overlapping generations models as special cases of the general equilibrium model. He uses the model and the first and second welfare theorems to explain the main ideas of insurance, capital theory, growth theory, and social security. It enables him to present a unified approach to portions of macro- as well as microeconomic theory. The book contains problems sets for most chapters.

This Solutions Manual contains answers to most of the problems in General Equilibrium, Overlapping Generations Models, and Optimal Growth Theory. Truman F. Bewley’s indispensable textbook—a cornerstone of courses on microeconomics, general equilibrium theory, and mathematical economics—covers the main premises behind insurance, capital theory, growth theory, and social security. Detailed explanations provide guidance to advanced undergraduate and graduate students, leading to in-depth understanding of Bewley’s unified approach to macroeconomics theory.

The prices of some products fluctuate dramatically, while others remain more constant. What accounts for these extreme differences? Renowned economist Truman F. Bewley investigates and elucidates this puzzling problem. Its crux, he argues, is that differentiated product prices are usually stable, whereas the prices of undifferentiated products – for which buyers can easily find comparable substitutes – are often volatile. Although product differentiation gives producers market power, this power alone does not guarantee price stability. There are nearly undifferentiated products whose producers have market power yet for which prices are unstable. Weakness of product differentiation makes it so advantageous for producers to compete on price that they do so and forego the benefits and stability of price collusion. Producers of truly differentiated goods prefer to compete on product performance rather than price and find that reducing prices during recessions does little to increase demand. Based on hundreds of interviews with businesspeople responsible for setting prices, Bewley’s book is an unusual and groundbreaking work, with findings vital for economists, students, and policymakers.