Kategoria BISAC: Business & Economics >> Economics - Theory

In recent years a host of Western Marxists have tried to emancipate Marx from responsibility for various unsavory doctrines. Political theorists have argued that Marx can avoid the weight of Stalinism and also the various theories, such as positivism, naturalism, Darwinism, technological determinism and the dialectics of nature that support Marxism. In the course of building up their defense of Marx, these modern critics have developed an elaborate but often confusing rationale whose premise consists of attributing many of the nefarious tendencies of Marxism to Engels, particularly the...

In his foreword, the president of the World Bank, James D. Wolfensohn, states plainly and precisely the rationale for this volume. -Evaluation is a central aspect of any poverty reduction endeavor. Evaluation implies that we have adopted a methodology that allows us to look in an effective way at the results of what we are doing so that we can, in turn, adapt our future actions toward the effective achievement of our goals. Evaluation adds value if we can learn something useful from it. It is not just a scorecard. It is something that helps us change our behavior or influence the behavior...

Paul A. Samuelson was the first American Nobel Laureate in economics, and the second overall. He was credited for "the scientific work through which he has developed static and dynamic economic theory and actively contributed to raising the level of analysis in economic science." That recognition is now thirty years old and Samuelson remains at work in the cutting edge of the discipline. He is also widely known for a basic textbook that became a landmark learning tool throughout the second half of the twentieth century. This excellent collegial appreciation focuses heavily on Samuelson's...

Economics is traditionally taken to be the social science concerned with the production, consumption, exchange, and distribution of wealth and commodities. Economists carefully track the comings and goings of the human household, whether written small (microeconomics) or large (macroeconomics) and attempt to predict future patterns under different situations. However, in constructing their models of economic behavior, economists often lose sight of the actual characteristics and motivations of their human subjects. In consequence, they have found the goal of an explanatory and predictive...

Nothing affects the modern economy (and society) more than decisions made in the market place, especially, but not only, decisions made by consumers. Although it is not startling to suggest that decisions made in production are affected by choices consumers make, consumers have long been viewed, not only by academic economists, as individual, isolated rational actors that make or refrain from purchases purely on the basis of narrow financial considerations. Markets are not and never were morally neutral. Market relations have always had an often taken-for-granted moral underpinning. The...

Throughout the world today former nation-states, as disparate as Yugoslavia, Somalia, and Canada, have either disintegrated or threaten to splinter into regions. The conflicts are economic, social, ethnic, linguistic, religious, political, and cultural. Higgins and Savoie analyze the reasons for these conflicts and show why attempts to eliminate regional disparities within nations have been largely unsuccessful. This volume is a highly readable, comprehensive survey of the literature and current debates in the fields of regional economics, development, policy, and planning.

The Discretionary Economy argues that we do in fact control our own political and economic destinies. As a community, we have discretion over policies that determine whether an economic process adequately provides for the necessities of life. We also determine who participates in normative public judgments and whether decisions distinguish between what is and what ought to be. Tool argues that we must continuously organize the institutional structures through which economic and political functions in the social process are carried on. We must exercise discretion by creating and...

The Economics of Welfare occupies a privileged position in economics. It contributed to the professionalization of economics, a goal aggressively and effectively pursued by Pigou's predecessor and teacher Alfred Marshall. The Economics of Welfare also may be credited with establishing welfare economics, by systematically analyzing market departures and their potential remedies. In writing The Economics of Welfare, Pigou built a bridge between the old and the new economics at Cambridge and in Britain. Much of the book remains relevant for contemporary economics....

Leading Issues in Black Political Economy brings together the foremost experts on issues ranging from employment, training, and education of African Americans. It also emphasizes macro-economic concerns of business development with special emphasis on long-term trends of black-owned businesses. The work emphasizes welfare considerations in an anti-welfare epoch, and the role of affirmative action now that it is under attack. Attention is given to the role of race in the continuing disparity of income distribution in American society. The highlights of Leading Issues include -An Employment...

Veblen's classic position on social status is intertwined with his interest in economic class and the political prospects of that class. The Vested Interests is squarely in that tradition. It aims to show how and why a discrepancy has arisen between the accepted principles of law and custom that underlie the business enterprise and the efficient management of industry. He also speculates on the civil and political difficulties inspired by this discrepancy between business civilization, and the social order.

Many of the essays in this collection originally appeared in Dial...