INCREASING RETURNS AND INFRAMARGINAL ECONOMICS – serie

This research monograph provides systematic and comprehensive materials for applying inframarginal analysis to study a wide range of economic phenomena. The analysis is based on a new overarching framework to resurrect the classical notion of division of labor and specialization, which is an essential source of increasing a nation's wealth. The framework absorbs many classical and neo-classical insights in a general equilibrium analysis and explains many micro- and macro-phenomena. Many areas of the discipline that have been customarily treated as separate branches can now be analyzed systematically within this integrated framework. These include, for example, micro-economics; macro-economics; development economics; international economics; urban economics; growth theory; industrial organization; applications of game theory in economics; economics of property rights; economics of transaction costs; economics of institutions and contract; economics of organization; economics of states; managerial economics; theory of hierarchy; new theory of the firm; theory of money; theory of insurance; theory of network and reliability.

Inframarginal analysis represents a methodology that extends marginal analysis, using non-classical mathematical programming, in efforts to investigate corner solutions and indivisibilities. As such this approach has been used to reintroduce classical insights regarding the division of labor and economic organization to the mainstream of economic inquiry. One of the most prolific and useful relevant applications of inframarginal analysis concerns the area of international trade theory. The ensuing field of study has attracted considerable — and rapidly expanding — interest in recent years. Yet, little has been done by way of organizing the accumulated knowledge in a single volume. This book fills that gap by collecting key articles that mark distinct stages in the evolution of research in the area of inframarginal applications to trade theory. In this context the volume represents an excellent introduction of this novel and exciting field of study to the new researcher, and an invaluable source of reference to those seasoned in inframarginal applications to trade theory.

Study of the progressive division of labor is a burgeoning industry in economics in recent years. Classical authors, dating back as early as 500 BC, have made insightful analyses on the determinants and implications of the division of labor. Unfortunately these writings are rather scattered and not readily accessible. This important book aims to fill this void, serving as a valuable source of reference for scholars interested in the economics of specialization.The volume begins with the precursors of political economy including the ancient Greeks, medieval Islamic scholastics and mercantilists, continues with the classical political economists and the neoclassicists, and concludes with the Austrian economists such as Hayek in the 1940s. It covers major themes and perspectives about the division of labor that have ever emerged in the discipline of the economic science, including the economics of increasing returns to specialization, the twin ideas of division of labor and the extent of the market, the theory of the spontaneous market order, coordination in the factory system and large scale manufactures, knowledge and the division of mental labor, integration of analyses of specialization into the neoclassical framework, etc.