Author : John B Davis
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 366 pages
File Size : 47,66 MB
Release : 2003-03-20
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1134633467
The concept of the individual and his/her motivations is a bedrock of philosophy. All strands of thought at heart come down to a particular theory of the individual. Economics, though, is guilty of taking this hugely important concept without questioning how we theorise it. This superb book remedies this oversight.The new approach put forward by Da
Author : John B. Davis
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 270 pages
File Size : 13,31 MB
Release : 2010-09-30
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780521173537
This book examines the different conceptions of the individual that have emerged in recent new approaches in economics, including behavioral economics, experimental economics, social preferences approaches, game theory, neuroeconomics, evolutionary and complexity economics, and the capability approach. These conceptions are classified according to whether they seek to revise the traditional atomist individual conception, put new emphasis on interaction and relations between individuals, account for individuals as evolving and self-organizing, and explain individuals in terms of capabilities. The method of analysis uses two identity criteria for distinguishing and re-identifying individuals to determine whether these different individual conceptions successfully identify individuals. Successful individual conceptions account for sub-personal and supra-personal bounds on single individual explanations. The former concerns the fragmentation of individuals into multiple selves; the latter concerns the dissolution of individuals into the social. The book develops an understanding of bounded individuality, seen as central to the defense of human rights.
Author : Robert Wichers
Publisher : Elsevier
Page : 219 pages
File Size : 39,62 MB
Release : 1997-03-26
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 0080525849
A Theory of Individual Behavior dispels the notion that individuals act as rational agents and strives to capture idiosyncratic humanness through rigorous mathematics. Wichers describes a version of economic behavior that is more comprehensive and satisfying than neoclassical models yet still consistent with the usual aggregated concepts that form the basis of applied microeconomics. Written in an accessible and convincing style, A Theory of Individual Behavior discusses innovative material in a format that encourages classroom use. All chapters have questions at their conclusions, and there is a strong emphasis on testable results. The book contains a short review of mathematical models and discussion of received microeconomic theory, as well as summaries at the ends of chapters and many examples and illustrations. - Dispels the notion that individuals act as rational agents while capturing idiosyncratic human behavior through rigorous mathematics - Presents an innovative approach to the evolution of microeconomic theory - Promotes advances in behavioral theories in the social sciences, including psychology and sociology - Delivers an accessible style with a strong emphasis on testable results
Author : Kenneth J. Arrow
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 347 pages
File Size : 32,91 MB
Release : 2012-06-26
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0300186983
Originally published in 1951, "Social Choice and Individual Values" introduced "Arrow's Impossibility Theorem" and founded the field of social choice theory in economics and political science. This new edition, including a new foreword by Nobel laureate Eric Maskin, reintroduces Arrow's seminal book to a new generation of students and researchers."Far beyond a classic, this small book unleashed the ongoing explosion of interest in social choice and voting theory. A half-century later, the book remains full of profound insight: its central message, 'Arrow's Theorem, ' has changed the way we think."--Donald G. Saari, author of "Decisions and Elections: Explaining the Unexpected "
Author : Gary S. Becker
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 31,86 MB
Release : 2013-02-06
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 022621706X
Since his pioneering application of economic analysis to racial discrimination, Gary S. Becker has shown that an economic approach can provide a unified framework for understanding all human behavior. In a highly readable selection of essays Becker applies this approach to various aspects of human activity, including social interactions; crime and punishment; marriage, fertility, and the family; and "irrational" behavior. "Becker's highly regarded work in economics is most notable in the imaginative application of 'the economic approach' to a surprising breadth of human activity. Becker's essays over the years have inevitably inspired a surge of research activity in testimony to the richness of his insights into human activities lying 'outside' the traditionally conceived economic markets. Perhaps no economist in our time has contributed more to expanding the area of interest to economists than Becker, and a number of these thought-provoking essays are collected in this book."—Choice Gary Becker was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Science in 1992.
Author : Oliver E. Williamson
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 43,44 MB
Release : 1993
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780195083569
This volume features a series of essays which arose from a conference on economics, addressing the question: what is the nature of the firm in economic analysis? This paperback edition includes the Nobel Lecture of R.N. Case.
Author : John Maynard Keynes
Publisher : Atlantic Publishers & Dist
Page : 410 pages
File Size : 15,34 MB
Release : 2016-04
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9788126905911
John Maynard Keynes is the great British economist of the twentieth century whose hugely influential work The General Theory of Employment, Interest and * is undoubtedly the century's most important book on economics--strongly influencing economic theory and practice, particularly with regard to the role of government in stimulating and regulating a nation's economic life. Keynes's work has undergone significant revaluation in recent years, and "Keynesian" views which have been widely defended for so long are now perceived as at odds with Keynes's own thinking. Recent scholarship and research has demonstrated considerable rivalry and controversy concerning the proper interpretation of Keynes's works, such that recourse to the original text is all the more important. Although considered by a few critics that the sentence structures of the book are quite incomprehensible and almost unbearable to read, the book is an essential reading for all those who desire a basic education in economics. The key to understanding Keynes is the notion that at particular times in the business cycle, an economy can become over-productive (or under-consumptive) and thus, a vicious spiral is begun that results in massive layoffs and cuts in production as businesses attempt to equilibrate aggregate supply and demand. Thus, full employment is only one of many or multiple macro equilibria. If an economy reaches an underemployment equilibrium, something is necessary to boost or stimulate demand to produce full employment. This something could be business investment but because of the logic and individualist nature of investment decisions, it is unlikely to rapidly restore full employment. Keynes logically seizes upon the public budget and government expenditures as the quickest way to restore full employment. Borrowing the * to finance the deficit from private households and businesses is a quick, direct way to restore full employment while at the same time, redirecting or siphoning
Author : Peter Róna
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 236 pages
File Size : 41,87 MB
Release : 2020-09-03
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 3030526739
This open access book examines from a variety of perspectives the disappearance of moral content and ethical judgment from the models employed in the formulation of modern economic theory, and some of the papers contain important proposals about how moral judgment could be reintroduced in economic theory. The chapters collected in this volume result from the favorable reception of the first volume of the Virtues in Economics series and represent further contributions to the themes set out in that volume: (i) examining the philosophical and methodological fallacies of this turn in modern economic theory that the removal of the moral motivation of economic agents from modern economic theory has entailed; and (ii) proposing a return descriptive economics as the means with which the moral content of economic life could be restored in economic theory. This book is of interest to researchers and students of the methodology of economics, ethics, philosophers concerned with agency and economists who build economic models that rest in the intention of the agent.
Author :
Publisher :
Page : 1603 pages
File Size : 32,14 MB
Release : 2015
Category : Economics
ISBN :
Russell Cooper and Andrew John have written an economics text aimed directly at students from its very inception. You?re thinking, "Yeah, sure. I?ve heard that before." This textbook, Economics: Theory Through Applications, centers around student needs and expectations through two premises:? Students are motivated to study economics if they see that it relates to their own lives.? Students learn best from an inductive approach, in which they are first confronted with a problem, and then led through the process of solving that problem. Many books claim to present economics in a way that is digestible for students; Russell and Andrew have truly created one from scratch. This textbook will assist you in increasing students? economic literacy both by developing their aptitude for economic thinking and by presenting key insights about economics that every educated individual should know. How? Russell and Andrew have done three things in this text to accomplish that goal: Applications Ahead of Theory: They present all the theory that is standard in Principles books. But by beginning with applications, students get to learn why this theory is needed. Learning through Repetition: Important tools appear over and over again, allowing students to learn from repetition and to see how one framework can be useful in many different contexts. A Student?s Table of Contents vs. An Instructor?s Table of Contents: There is no further proof that Russell and Andrew have created a book aimed specifically at educating students about economics than their two tables of contents.
Author : Alan Kirman
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 366 pages
File Size : 13,97 MB
Release : 2010-09-13
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1136941673
The economic crisis is also a crisis for economic theory. Most analyses of the evolution of the crisis invoke three themes, contagion, networks and trust, yet none of these play a major role in standard macroeconomic models. What is needed is a theory in which these aspects are central. The direct interaction between individuals, firms and banks does not simply produce imperfections in the functioning of the economy but is the very basis of the functioning of a modern economy. This book suggests a way of analysing the economy which takes this point of view. The economy should be considered as a complex adaptive system in which the agents constantly react to, influence and are influenced by, the other individuals in the economy. In such systems which are familiar from statistical physics and biology for example, the behaviour of the aggregate cannot be deduced from the behaviour of the average, or "representative" individual. Just as the organised activity of an ants’ nest cannot be understood from the behaviour of a "representative ant" so macroeconomic phenomena should not be assimilated to those associated with the "representative agent". This book provides examples where this can clearly be seen. The examples range from Schelling’s model of segregation, to contributions to public goods, the evolution of buyer seller relations in fish markets, to financial models based on the foraging behaviour of ants. The message of the book is that coordination rather than efficiency is the central problem in economics. How do the myriads of individual choices and decisions come to be coordinated? How does the economy or a market, "self organise" and how does this sometimes result in major upheavals, or to use the phrase from physics, "phase transitions"? The sort of system described in this book is not in equilibrium in the standard sense, it is constantly changing and moving from state to state and its very structure is always being modified. The economy is not a ship sailing on a well-defined trajectory which occasionally gets knocked off course. It is more like the slime described in the book "emergence", constantly reorganising itself so as to slide collectively in directions which are neither understood nor necessarily desired by its components.
