Influential neoclassical economist Lionel McKenzie has made major contributions to postwar economic thought in the fields of equilibrium, trade, and capital accumulation. This selection of his papers traces the development of his thinking in these three crucial areas.
No names are more closely associated with modern trade theory than Eli Heckscher and Bertil Ohlin. The basic Heckscher-Ohlin proposition, according to which a country exports factors (embodied in goods) in relatively abundant supply and imports factors in relatively scarce supply, is a key component of modern trade theory. In this book, Robert Baldwin traces the development of the HO model, describing the historical twists and turns that have led to the basic modern theoretical model in use today.
Although social scientists generally agree that technology plays a major role in the economy, economics and technology have yet to be brought together in a coherent framework that is both analytically interesting and empirically oriented. This book draws on the tools of science and technology studies and economic sociology to reconceptualize the intersection of economy and technology, suggesting materiality—the idea that social existence involves not only actors and social relations but also objects—as the theoretical point of convergence.
The Swiss-Italian economist Christian Marazzi is one of the core theorists of the Italian postfordist movement, along with Antonio Negri, Paolo Virno, and Bifo (Franco Berardi). But although his work is often cited by scholars (particularly by those in the field of "Cognitive Capitalism"), his writing has never appeared in English. This translation of his most recent work, Capital and Language (published in Italian in 2002), finally makes Marazzi's work available to an English-speaking audience.
Guillermo Calvo, one of the most influential macroeconomists of the last thirty years, has made pathbreaking contributions in such areas as time-inconsistency, lack of credibility, stabilization, transition economies, debt maturity, capital flows, and financial crises. His work on macroeconomic issues relevant for developing countries has set the tone for much of the research in this area and greatly influenced practitioners' thinking in Latin America, Eastern Europe, Asia, and elsewhere.
An important recent advancement in macroeconomics is the development of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) macromodels. The use of DSGE models to study monetary policy, however, has led to paradoxical and puzzling results on a number of central monetary issues including price determinacy and liquidity effects.
In this pithy and provocative book, the noted economist Daniel Cohen offers his analysis of the global shift to a post-industrial era. If it was once natural to speak of industrial society, Cohen writes, it is more difficult to speak meaningfully of post-industrial "society." The solidarity that once characterized industrial society no longer exists. The different components of large industrial enterprises have been systematically disassembled: tasks considered nonessential are assigned to subcontractors; engineers are grouped together in research sites, distant from the workers.
In 1931 distinguished economist John Maynard Keynes published a short essay, Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren, in his collection Essays in Persuasion. In the essay, he expressed optimism for the economic future despite the doldrums of the post-World War I years and the onset of the Great Depression. Keynes imagined that by 2030 the standard of living would be dramatically higher; people, liberated from want (and without the desire to consume for the sake of consumption), would work no more than fifteen hours a week, devoting the rest of their time to leisure and culture.
The dramatic shifts in heartland regional economies in the U.S. and other advanced industrial countries have thrown into question the ability of capitalist development to produce permanent growth, economic well being, and balanced regional development. This book develops a theory that radically reconceptualizes the economic forces producing regional change and tests it empirically for a set of fifteen sectors in the U.S. It offers a pioneering approach which should enable planners and managers to better cope with baffling changes in the current economic viability of regions.
Revolutionary developments in economics are rare. The conservative bias of the field and its enshrined knowledge make it difficult to introduce new ideas not in line with received theory. Happiness research, however, has the potential to change economics substantially.
