Book Description

This sequel to Frank Hahn's "Equilibrium and Macroeconomics" presents his theoretical work published over the past thirty years. The twentyone contributions have been selected on the basis of their relevance to current economic debate, and they comprise some of Hahn's most widely cited and influential essays.Organized in five parts - Money, Non-Walrasian Equilibria, Stability, Growth, and Miscellaneous - most of the essays concentrate on monetary theory and economic dynamics (or stability). In the first instance, Hahn shows that classical Arrow-Debreu general equilibrium theory cannot be used for monetary theory. A reconstruction of this theory turns out to have some surprising welfare economics implications. Concerning dynamics, Hahn's main preoccupations are with price dynamics that allow trading at "false" prices and with the stability of growth equilibrium with heterogeneous capital goods, which remains important to current theorizing on rational expectations equilibria.The remaining essays cover a variety of topics such as the influence of uncertainty on savings and excess capacity in imperfect competition. The book also includes an introduction by Hahn commenting on each essay, and his Jevons Lecture, "In Praise of Economic Theory."Frank Hahn is Professor of Economics at the University of Cambridge and the author of "Equilibrium and Macroeconomics" (MIT Press 1985) and "Money and Inflation "(an MIT Press paperback).