A Brief Prehistory of the Theory of the Firm PDF Download

Author: Paul Walker
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351041371
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 124

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Book Description
The theory of the firm did not exist, in any serious manner, until around 1970. Only then did the current theory of the firm literature begin to emerge, based largely upon the work of Ronald Coase and to a lesser degree Frank Knight. It was work by Armen Alchian, Robert Crawford, Harold Demsetz, Michael Jensen, Benjamin Klein, William Meckling and Oliver Williamson, among others, that drove the upswing in interest in the firm among mainstream economists. This accessible book provides a valuable overview of the ‘prehistory’ of the firm. Spanning an impressive timeline, it delves into Antiquity, the Medieval era, the pre-classical economics period and the 19th and 20th centuries. Next, the book traces the theoretical contributions from pre-classical, classical and neoclassical economics. It will be illuminating reading for students and researchers of the history of economic thought, industrial organization, microeconomic theory and business history.

Author: Paul Walker
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000358844
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
Foundations of Organisational Economics: Histories and Theories of the Firm and Production delves into a range of key topics to do with the history of the mainstream approach to the theory of production and the theory of the firm. This includes the frameworks used to analyse production, the division of labour and its application to the firm and the development of the neoclassical model of production. The first topic explored is the change from a normative approach to a largely positive approach to the analysis of the theory of production, which occurred around the seventeenth century. The next topic is an examination of the relationship (or the lack of a relationship) between the division of labour and the theory of the firm. In the fourth chapter, the focus is on the development of the proto-neoclassical approach to production. Here, the development of the theories of monopoly, oligopoly and perfect competition are discussed, as well as the theory of input utilisation. Chapter 5 looks at Marshall’s idea of the representative firm, which was the main early neoclassical approach to the theory of industry-level production. The penultimate chapter considers the criticisms made of the neoclassical model between 1940 and 1970. This work is an illuminating reference for students and researchers of the history of economic thought, industrial organisation, microeconomic theory and organisational studies.

Author: Alain Alcouffe
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135110764X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
The financial crisis of 2007 required the economics discipline to thoroughly re-evaluate its prevailing theories about economic cycles and economic growth. With a focus on Europe, this volume identifies the latest strands of research on business cycles, monetary theory, the evolution of social policies and public spending, and the institutional context of the European Union. It also considers whether these new ideas could have helped us avoid the crisis, and how they might reshape the current economic paradigm. This book will be of interest to advanced students and researchers in European economics, macroeconomics and economic history.

Author: Niels Geiger
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317216334
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 146

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Book Description
Throughout the history of economic thought, interest in business cycles and economic crises has sometimes been observed to rise during times of crises, recessions and depressions. However, the treatment of this topic in the literature has generally been merely anecdotal. This book presents a bibliometric and econometric analysis of the development of business cycle and crises theory and its connection to economic developments, particularly since the early 20th century. The book explores the connection between economic development and the literature, utilising systematic bibliometric and rigorous econometric methods and drawing its data from a wide range of sources. This volume provides quantitative answers to questions which have not previously been subject to a precise and comprehensive empirical analysis. This book will be of great interest to historians of economic thought for its novel treatment of a much-discussed topic, and its well-founded and transparent results.

Author: Harald Hagemann
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351245171
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
As the world grapples with increased globalization and technological change, Friedrich List’s work appears more relevant than ever before. His theory of "productive powers" and his argument for protecting infant industries give us a valuable way of looking at innovation systems, winners and losers in international trade, and the current shift towards economic and political nationalism. Comprising fifteen specially commissioned chapters from a range of international scholars, this book explores many aspects of List’s economic thought, including industrial development, political economy, the economics of education, infrastructure and catching-up processes in Asian economies. This volume will be illuminating reading for advanced students and researchers in the history of economic thought, economic history, economic policy and international trade.

Author: Annalisa Rosselli
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351611658
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
Recently, students and scholars have expressed dissatisfaction with the current state of economics and have called for the reintroduction of historical perspectives into economic thinking. Supporting the idea that fruitful lessons can be drawn from the work of past economists, this volume brings together an international cross section of leading economists and historians of economic thought to reflect on the crucial role that money, crises and finance play in the economy. The book draws on the work of economists throughout history to consider afresh themes such as financial and real explanations of economic crises, the role of central banks, and the design of macroeconomic policies. These themes are all central to the work of Maria Cristina Marcuzzo, and the contributions both reflect on and further her research agenda. This book will be of interest to researchers in the history of economic thought, and those who wish to gain a deeper understanding of the variety and diversity in approaches to economic ideas throughout history.

Author: Till Düppe
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351688219
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
In recent years, the focus of historians of economic thought has changed to also include the ideas and practices of contemporary economists. This has opened up new questions regarding the utilization of sources, choice of method, narrative styles, and ethical issues, as well as a new awareness of the historian’s place, role, and task. This book brings together leading contributors to provide, for the first time, a methodological overview of the historiography of economics. Emphasising the quality of the scholarship of recent decades, the book seeks to provide research tools for future historians of economic thought, as well as to any historians of social science with an interest in historiographic issues.

Author: Thomas Marmefelt
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113672818X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
Today, most money is credit money, created by commercial banks. While credit can finance innovation, excessive credit can lead to boom/bust cycles, such as the recent financial crisis. This highlights how the organization of our monetary system is crucial to stability. One way to achieve this is by separating the unit of account from the medium of exchange and in pre-modern Europe, such a separation existed. This new volume examines this idea of monetary separation and this history of monetary arrangements in the North and Baltic Seas region, from the Hanseatic League onwards. This book provides a theoretical analysis of four historical cases in the Baltic and North Seas region, with a view to examining evolution of monetary arrangements from a new monetary economics perspective. Since the objective exhange value of money (its purchasing power), reflects subjective individual valuations of commodities, the author assesses these historical cases by means of exchange rates. Using theories from new monetary economics , the book explores how the units of account and their media of exchange evolved as social conventions, and offers new insight into the separation between the two. Through this exploration, it puts forward that money is a social institution, a clearing device for the settlement of accounts, and so the value of money, or a separate unit of account, ultimately results from the size of its network of users. The History of Money and Monetary Arrangements offers a highly original new insight into monetary arrangments as an evolutionary process. It will be of great interest to an international audience of scholars and students, including those with an interest in economic history, evolutionary economics and new monetary economics.

Author: Cosimo Perrotta
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317218310
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
Contemporary mainstream economists see social wealth as the sum of individual incomes, but for three centuries many economists saw wealth as consisting of the public and private resources of a nation. This led them to explore the idea of unproductive labour, which provides a nation with an individual income, but does not contribute to an increase in social wealth or help to foster development. This book analyses the evolution of ideas surrounding unproductive labour, offering an unprecedented history that guides readers from the work of Petty through to the present economic crisis. This volume explores the work of several key scholars, including Smith, Petty, Marx, Ricardo, Mill, Say and Schumpeter. This book is suitable for scholars and researchers with an interest in the history of economic thought, labour economics and economic philosophy. Winner of the 2019 Ernest Lluch Prize from the Spanish Association of Economic History

Author: J. Lützen
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9780387906478
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
I first learned the theory of distributions from Professor Ebbe Thue Poulsen in an undergraduate course at Aarhus University. Both his lectures and the textbook, Topological Vector Spaces, Distributions and Kernels by F. Treves, used in the course, opened my eyes to the beauty and abstract simplicity of the theory. However my incomplete study of many branches of classical analysis left me with the question: Why is the theory of distributions important? In my continued studies this question was gradually answered, but my growing interest in the history of mathematics caused me to alter my question to other questions such as: For what purpose, if any, was the theory of distributions originally created? Who invented distributions and when? I quickly found answers to the last two questions: distributions were invented by S. Sobolev and L. Schwartz around 1936 and 1950, respectively. Knowing this answer, however, only created a new question: Did Sobolev and Schwartz construct distributions from scratch or were there earlier trends and, if so, what were they? It is this question, concerning the pre history of the theory of distributions, which I attempt to answer in this book. Most of my research took place at the History of Science Department of Aarhus University. I wish to thank this department for its financial and intellectual support. I am especially grateful to Lektors Kirsti Andersen from the History of Science Department and Lars Mejlbo from the Mathematics Department, for their kindness, constructive criticism, and encouragement.