Imperfect General Equilibrium: The Economy as an Evolutionary Process: Individualistic, Discrete, Deterministic

ISBN-13: 9783540581024 / Angielski / Miękka / 1994 / 167 str.

Pier C. Nicola

Opis

Economic theory of the last fifty years has been dominated by the paradigm of General Equilibrium Theory, based on the scientific work of Walras-Pareto-Cassel-Wald-Hicks-Arrow-De breu-McKenzie. Some of its grounding assumptions are: all prices are fully flexible; an auctioneer appropriately manipulates all prices according to the law of supply and demand; every con sumer has only one budget constraint; all agents are perfectly informed; no actions are taken by agents before a vector of prices has been found such that all markets clear. Indeed, when all markets clear every agent can implement her/his chosen (opti mal) action and nobody is urged to change his/her decisions. Under these assumptions it is generally said that in a (one pe riod, competitive) general equilibrium model there is no place for money. The present monograph takes general equilibrium as the ba sis on which to build the model presented. But its first aim is to completely dispense with the Walrasian auctioneer by giving firms the task of choosing their output price period after period."

Spis treści

1 Meaningful Elements of Economic Thought.- 1.1 Some Predecessors.- 1.2 Walras and Associates.- 1.3 Modern Competitive Theories.- 1.4 Temporary General Equilibrium.- 1.5 General non Competitive Equilibrium 14.- 1.6 Fixed Prices and Rationing.- 1.7 Game Theory and Market Forms.- 1.8 Sequential Equilibria and Rational Expectations.- 2 Introductory Examples.- 2.1 Summary of a One Period Walrasian Model.- 2.2 A “Vital Utility” Index.- 2.3 Numerical Experiments.- 2.3.1 Walrasian Equilibrium.- 2.3.2 Imperfect Equilibrium without Money.- 2.3.3 Imperfect Equilibrium with Money.- 2.4 Conclusion.- 3 Goods, Money, Public Administration.- 3.1 Goods.- 3.2 Money.- 3.3 Prices and Values.- 3.4 Labour.- 3.5 Public Goods and Public Administration.- 4 Firms.- 4.1 Preliminaries.- 4.2 The Firm.- 4.3 Present Choices.- 4.4 Intertemporal Decisions.- 4.5 Existence of an Optimal Program.- 4.6 Revising Decisions.- 4.7 Market Choices by Firms.- 5 Consumers.- 5.1 Preliminaries.- 5.2 Consumers.- 5.2.1 Young Consumers.- 5.2.2 Adult Consumers.- 5.2.3 Retired Consumers.- 5.3 Conclusion.- 6 Imperfect General Equilibrium.- 6.1 General Environment.- 6.2 The Network of Exchanges.- 6.3 Imperfect Temporary General Equilibrium.- 6.4 Updating Prices.- 7 Dynamics and Growth, Stationary Equilibria.- 7.1 Some Elements on Evolutionary Processes.- 7.2 Stationary Equilibria.- 7.3 Endogenous Cycles. Chaos.- 8 Numeric Simulations. Cycles and Quasi-Chaos.- 8.1 Society and the Computer.- 8.2 Main Features.- 8.3 Firms’ Decisions.- 8.3.1 Current Decisions of Firms.- 8.3.2 Current Production of Firms.- 8.4 Labour Rationing.- 8.5 Consumers’ Decisions.- 8.6 Effective Transactions.- 8.7 Updating Parameters in Calendar Time.- 9 Micro-Analysis versus Macro-Synthesis.- 9.1 Microeconomics and Macroeconomics.- 9.2 Aggregation.- 9.3 Aggregations in the Imperfect Model.- 9.3.1 Imperfect Aggregate Model without Money.- 9.3.2 Imperfect Aggregate Monetary Model.- 10 Epilogue.- A.1 Linear Spaces.- A.2 Topological Spaces and Metric Spaces.- A.3 Linear Topological Spaces.- A.4 Normed Spaces and Banach Spaces.- References.- Name Index.