Foundations of Economic Development

ISBN-13: 9783642775949 / Angielski / Miękka / 2011 / 372 str.

Arvid Aulin

Opis

DYNAMIC ECONOMICS with increasing returns is extended to cope with economic growth, the business cycles and the irregular swings in the long-term development as different aspects of the same dynamical system, the economic system "as a whole." HUMAN CAPITAL emerges as the seminal concept: economic growth is in this dynamics causally reduced to the growth of human capital and thus to the growth of exact scientific knowledge. An analysis of this knowledge shows that quality education in hard sciences must be a prime target of future economic policies. A CAUSAL STRUCTURE, new in economics, underlies the extended dynamics. To enable students to study and to improve it, a detailled introduction to nonlinear causality is given, emphasizing the points relevant to this causal structure. NATIONAL ACCOUNTING and input-output dynamics are suggested to be extended to include also the production prices and production of human capital and of human time, by using a method of calculation indicated in detail in the book.

Spis treści

I. Human Capital: The Fundamental Concept.- 1. Science and Human Capital.- 1.1. Accumulating Scientific Knowledge as the Basis of Human Capital.- 1.2. Creative or ”Hard” Science vs. Commenting or ”Soft” Science.- 1.3. The Rational Core of Human Civilization.- 2. Enemies of Human Capital.- 2.1. Philosophical Hubris.- 2.2. Philosophical Dogmatism.- 2.3. Dogmatic Cultural Relativism.- 3. The Nature of Exact Science.- 3.1. The Formation of Fundamental Theories.- 3.2. How Gödel’s Theorem Confirmed and Kuhn’s Philosophy Failed to Refute the Cumulative Nature of Exact Scientific Knowledge.- II. Nonlinear Causality: An Introduction to Higher Analysis of Causal Processes.- 4. Mathematical Dynamics as the Fundamental Method of Causal Science.- 4.1. The Historical Struggle Between the Linguistic and Dynamic Conceptions of Science.- 4.2. The Mathematical Analysis of Causal Processes.- 5. Developmental Stages of Mathematical Dynamics.- 5.1. The Hamilton-Jacobi Theory (Classical Dynamics).- 5.2. The Next Step: Dissipative Systems.- 5.3. From Dissipative Systems to Stability and Attractor Theory (Modern Dynamics).- 6. Causality in Bounded Dynamics: Full Predictability Or Chaos.- 6.1. Classical Attractors and Predictable Behaviour.- 6.2. The Nonclassical Attractors.- 6.3. The Emergence of Chaotic Behaviour from Bounded Dynamics.- 7. Causality in Unbounded Dynamics: Self-steering.- 7.1. The Significance of Unbounded Dynamics and Self-steering.- 7.2. Bernoullian Growth Systems.- III. Economic Causality: The Reduction to Human Capital.- 8. Extended Input-Output Dynamics and the Concept of National Economy.- 8.1. The Phenomenological Theory of National Economy.- 8.2. The Nonlinear Coefficients of Quantum Products.- 8.3. The Production of Human Capital (Education) and of Human Time.- 8.4. The Generalized Input-Ouput Dynamics Including the Production of Human Capital and Human Time.- Conclusions for National Accounting.- 9. The Neoclassical Tradition.- 9.1. The Solow Model as a Bernoullian System.- 9.2. An Application of the Solow Model to Economic Development in the Very Long Run.- 10. Fundamental Economic Causality: A Generalized Lucasian Dynamics.- 10.1. From Romer to Lucas to General Objectives of Post-socialist Economic Theory.- 10.2. A Generalization of the Lucas 1988 Mechanics of Economic Development: The Defining Equations.- 10.3. The Derivation of the Oscillation Equations and of a General Solution Algorithm.- 10.4. A Balanced-growth Path as the Optimal Solution: Growth Type 1.- 10.5. A Path of Growing Productivity of Capital as the Optimal Solution: Growth Type 2.- 10.6. Causal Explanation of the Kuznets Swings and the Trend-acceleration Patterns in the Long-term Economic Development.- 10.7. Nonstatistical ‘Basic Business Cycles’.- 10.8. The Connection Between Monetary and Dynamical Stability.- 10.9. Structural Principles Governing the Present Theory of Economic Development.- Conclusions for Post-socialist Political Economy.- IV. The Politico-Cultural Causality of Human Capital.- 11. On the Mathematical Dynamics of Human Action.- 11.1. The External and Internal Causality of Human Action.- 11.2. The Entropy Laws of Survival and the Origin of Social Hierarchy.- 12. The Politico-cultural Factors of Human Capital.- 12.1. The Index ko of Individual Freedom.- 12.2. A Historical Example: The Archaic-totalitarian Development of the Russian Society in the Period 1471–1991.- 12.3. A Different Story: The Emergence of Growth Economies in the West.- 12.4. The Index ho of Scientific Rationalism.- Conclusions on the Importance of Scientific Rationality.- References.- Addendum: The Business Cycles Revisited.

O autorze

The subject of this book is an extension of dynamic economics with increasing returns, in search of a post-socialist political economy. The method of strictly causal analysis based on dynamical systems makes it possible to represent different aspects of economic behaviour in a single dynamical system.