Economic Calculation and the Limits of Organization
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A Study of Paul A. Samuelson's Economics
Copyright is owned by the Author of the thesis. Permission is given for a copy to be downloaded by an individual for the purpose of research and private study only. The thesis may not be reproduced elsewhere without the permission of the Author. A Study of Paul A. Samuelson's Econol11ics: Making Economics Accessible to Students A thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Economics at Massey University Palmerston North, New Zealand. Leanne Marie Smith July 2000 Abstract Paul A. Samuelson is the founder of the modem introductory economics textbook. His textbook Economics has become a classic, and the yardstick of introductory economics textbooks. What is said to distinguish economics from the other social sciences is the development of a textbook tradition. The textbook presents the fundamental paradigms of the discipline, these gradually evolve over time as puzzles emerge, and solutions are found or suggested. The textbook is central to the dissemination of the principles of a discipline. Economics has, and does contribute to the education of students, and advances economic literacy and understanding in society. It provided a common economic language for students. Systematic analysis and research into introductory textbooks is relatively recent. The contribution that textbooks play in portraying a discipline and its evolution has been undervalued and under-researched. Specifically, applying bibliographical and textual analysis to textbook writing in economics, examining a single introductory economics textbook and its successive editions through time is new. When it is considered that an economics textbook is more than a disseminator of information, but a physical object with specific content, presented in a particular way, it changes the way a researcher looks at that textbook. -
Violence Cycle Theory Will Be Introduced in Analogy to the Praxeological Business Cycle Theory (According to Ludwig Von Mises)
The VOL. 19 | NO. 4 | 330–344 QUArtERLY WINTER 2016 JOURNAL of AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS THE PRAXEOLOGY OF COERCION: A NEW THEORY OF VIOLENCE CYCLES RAHIM TAGHIZADEGAN AND MARC-FELIX Otto ABSTRACT: As the first application of the praxeological discipline of “Cratics” (Taghizadegan and Otto, 2015), a theory of the supply and demand of bads is developed. On this foundation, a violence cycle theory will be introduced in analogy to the praxeological business cycle theory (according to Ludwig von Mises). Central to this approach are the subjective perceptions of threats and possible bluffs regarding the backing of those threats. Such a violence cycle theory can explain the stability of structures of violence and reveal new interpretations of the “long peace” hypothesis. KEYWORDS: Austrian school, praxeology, catallactics, coercion JEL CLASSIFICATION: B53 hose actions and things which render a marginal utility to men can be described as goods. In analogy, those actions and things Twhich cause to expect a “marginal disutility” can be described as bads. Catallactics, i.e., the economics of direct and indirect Rahim Taghizadegan ([email protected]) is director of the academic research institute Scholarium (scholarium.at) in Vienna, Austria, lecturer at several univer- sities and faculty member at the International Academy of Philosophy in Liech- tenstein. Marc-Felix Otto ([email protected]) is equity partner at the consulting firm The Advisory House in Zürich, Switzerland. Both authors would like to thank the research staff at the Scholarium for their help and input. 330 Rahim Taghizadegan and Marc-Felix Otto: The Praxeology of Coercion… 331 exchange, can describe the process of the interaction of men who mutually promise and transfer goods to each other. -
Ludwig Von Mises, Socialism: an Economic and Sociological Analysis [1922]
The Online Library of Liberty A Project Of Liberty Fund, Inc. Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis [1922] The Online Library Of Liberty This E-Book (PDF format) is published by Liberty Fund, Inc., a private, non-profit, educational foundation established in 1960 to encourage study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals. 2010 was the 50th anniversary year of the founding of Liberty Fund. It is part of the Online Library of Liberty web site http://oll.libertyfund.org, which was established in 2004 in order to further the educational goals of Liberty Fund, Inc. To find out more about the author or title, to use the site's powerful search engine, to see other titles in other formats (HTML, facsimile PDF), or to make use of the hundreds of essays, educational aids, and study guides, please visit the OLL web site. This title is also part of the Portable Library of Liberty DVD which contains over 1,000 books and quotes about liberty and power, and is available free of charge upon request. The cuneiform inscription that appears in the logo and serves as a design element in all Liberty Fund books and web sites is the earliest-known written appearance of the word “freedom” (amagi), or “liberty.” It is taken from a clay document written about 2300 B.C. in the Sumerian city-state of Lagash, in present day Iraq. To find out more about Liberty Fund, Inc., or the Online Library of Liberty Project, please contact the Director at [email protected]. -
9 Some Implications of Capital Heterogeneity Benjamin Powell*
Macintosh HD:Users:Raydens:Public:RAYDENS IMAC JOBS:12345- EE - BOETTKE (EE1):BOETTKE TEXT (M2294) Macintosh HD:Users:Raydens:Public:RAYDENS IMAC JOBS:12345- EE - BOETTKE (EE1):BOETTKE TEXT (M2294) 9 Some implications of capital heterogeneity Benjamin Powell* 9.1 Introduction A tractor is not a hammer. Both are capital goods but they usually serve different purposes. Yet both can be used to accomplish more than one goal. A tractor can be used to plow a field, pull a trailer, or any number of other tasks. A hammer could be used by a carpenter to build a house or by an automobile mechanic to fix a car. The fact that a tractor and hammer serve different purposes but yet each is capable of serving more than one single purpose should seem obvious. Yet the consistent applica- tion of this observation to economic theory is one of the unique aspects of the Austrian school and it has led the Austrian school to come to unique conclusions in areas ranging from socialist calculation, to business cycles and to economic development among others. Capital goods are those goods that are valued because of their ability to produce other goods that are the ultimate object for consumption. Because these capital goods are heterogeneous and yet have multi- specific uses we must coordinate economic activity to best align the structure of capital goods to most efficiently produce consumer goods without leaving any higher valued consumption wants left unsatisfied. The coordina- tion of consumption plans with the billions of ways the capital structure could be combined to satisfy those consumption plans is one of the major tasks any economy must accomplish. -
Diane Elson: Marx and Feminist Economics
Marx and Feminist Economics Notes for a presentation by Diane Elson at Conference on Studying Modern Capitalism- The Relevance of Marx Today At Institute for International Political Economy at the Berlin School of Economics and Law July 2018 Introduction Feminist economics emerged as a distinct body of work in economics in the 1990s, with the founding of the International Association for Feminist Economics (1992), the journal Feminist Economics (1995) and the publication of the Elgar Companion to Feminist Economics (Peterson and Lewis, eds, 1999). It is unified by a concern with gender equality and women’s rights and well- being, and the application of economic thought to analyse gender inequality and women’s lack of rights and inadequate well-being. Of course, a concern with these issues is not altogether new in political economy. The Introduction to the Elgar Companion identified as examples John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill, Friedrich Engels, and Torstein Veblen. The variety of approach exemplified in these examples continues in today’s feminist economics, which is eclectic in the kinds of economic theory and analytical tools that are utilised. The first issue of Feminist Economics included a critique of Becker’s theory of the family, a critique of the use that mainstream economists make of the story of Robinson Crusoe, an econometric test of the influence of social/institutional variables on behaviour within families, a debate between a neoclassical economist and an institutionalist economist on determinants of women’s labour force participation in USA, and a paper about caring labour that compares neoclassical and institutionalist perspectives. -
On the Relationship Between the VCG Mechanism and Market Clearing
On the Relationship between the VCG Mechanism and Market Clearing Takashi Tanaka1 Na Li2 Kenko Uchida3 Abstract— We consider a social cost minimization problem well. First, it may not be easy to guarantee the existence with equality and inequality constraints in which a central co- of supply function equilibria in realistic electricity markets. ordinator allocates infinitely divisible goods to self-interested N As demonstrated by [13], a pure Nash equilibrium may fail firms under information asymmetry. We consider the Vickrey- Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanism and study its connection to an to exist even in a relatively simple supply function bidding alternative mechanism based on market clearing-price. Under model. Second, even if the supply function equilibria are the considered set up, we show that the VCG payments are known to exist, it could be a difficult task for the firms to find equal to the path integrals of the vector field of the market them efficiently [14]. Finally, unlike the mechanism design clearing prices, indicating a close relationship between the approach (discussed next), the efficiency loss is inevitable. VCG mechanism and the “clearing-price” mechanism. We then discuss its implications for the electricity market design and The mechanism design is an alternative approach to- also exploit this connection to analyze the budget balance of wards the market power mitigation. For instance, the refer- the VCG mechanism. ences [15]–[18] consider applications of the Vickrey-Clarke- Groves (VCG) mechanism [2, Ch. 23] to several market I. INTRODUCTION design problems in power system operations. The VCG Market power monitoring and mitigation are essential mechanism provides an attractive market model since it aspects of today’s electricity market operations [1]. -
FALL 2015 Journal of Austrian Economics
The VOL. 18 | NO. 3 | 294–310 QUArtERLY FALL 2015 JOURNAL of AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS PRAXEOLOGY OF COERCION: CATALLACTICS VS. CRATICS RAHIM TAGHIZADEGAN AND MARC-FELIX Otto ABSTRACT: Ludwig von Mises’s most important legacy is the foundation and analysis of catallactics, i.e. the economics of interpersonal exchange, as a sub-discipline of praxeology, the science of human action. In this paper, based both on Mises’s methodical framework and on insights by Tadeusz Kotarbinski and Max Weber, a “praxeology of coercion,” or, more precisely, an analysis of interpersonal actions involving threats, is developed. Our investigation yields both a reviewed taxonomy of human action and a first analysis of the elements of this theory, which we term cratics. This shall establish the basis for adjacent studies, furthering Mises’s project regarding the science of human action. KEYWORDS: Austrian school, praxeology, catallactics, coercion JEL CLASSIFICATION: B53 Rahim Taghizadegan ([email protected]) is director of the academic research institute Scholarium (scholarium.at) in Vienna, Austria, lecturer at several univer- sities and faculty member at the International Academy of Philosophy in Liech- tenstein. Marc-Felix Otto ([email protected]) is equity partner at the consulting firm The Advisory House in Zurich, Switzerland. Both authors would like to thank the research staff at the Scholarium for their help and input, in particular Johannes Leitner and Andreas M. Kramer. 294 Rahim Taghizadegan and Marc-Felix Otto: Praxeology Of Coercion… 295 INTRODUCTION he Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises intended to re-establish economics on a deductive basis, with the subjective Tvaluations, expectations, and goals of acting humans at the center, following the tradition of the “Austrian School” (see Mises, 1940 and 1962). -
Libertarianism Karl Widerquist, Georgetown University-Qatar
Georgetown University From the SelectedWorks of Karl Widerquist 2008 Libertarianism Karl Widerquist, Georgetown University-Qatar Available at: https://works.bepress.com/widerquist/8/ Libertarianism distinct ideologies using the same label. Yet, they have a few commonalities. [233] [V1b-Edit] [Karl Widerquist] [] [w6728] Libertarian socialism: Libertarian socialists The word “libertarian” in the sense of the believe that all authority (government or combination of the word “liberty” and the private, dictatorial or democratic) is suffix “-ian” literally means “of or about inherently dangerous and possibly tyrannical. freedom.” It is an antonym of “authoritarian,” Some endorse the motto: where there is and the simplest dictionary definition is one authority, there is no freedom. who advocates liberty (Simpson and Weiner Libertarian socialism is also known as 1989). But the name “libertarianism” has “anarchism,” “libertarian communism,” and been adopted by several very different “anarchist communism,” It has a variety of political movements. Property rights offshoots including “anarcho-syndicalism,” advocates have popularized the association of which stresses worker control of enterprises the term with their ideology in the United and was very influential in Latin American States and to a lesser extent in other English- and in Spain in the 1930s (Rocker 1989 speaking countries. But they only began [1938]; Woodcock 1962); “feminist using the term in 1955 (Russell 1955). Before anarchism,” which stresses person freedoms that, and in most of the rest of the world (Brown 1993); and “eco-anarchism” today, the term has been associated almost (Bookchin 1997), which stresses community exclusively with leftists groups advocating control of the local economy and gives egalitarian property rights or even the libertarian socialism connection with Green abolition of private property, such as and environmental movements. -
Hayek and the Departure from Praxeology
LIBERTARIAN PAPERS VOL. 2, ART. NO. 24 (2010) HAYEK AND THE DEPARTURE FROM PRAXEOLOGY JAKUB WOZINSKI* TIMES OF UNCRITICALLY ACCEPTING the application of methods of natural science to human science are seemingly gone. In the present age, we usually deal with so-called “crypto-positivism,” which revised certain assumptions, but is still stuck in the ideal of science professed more geometrico. Hans-Hermann Hoppe is a philosopher whose theoretical effort proves that the errors of naturalism and empiricism can be overcome only by praxeology based on a priori argumentation. Historians of philosophy very often note the influence that Epicurus had on Karl Marx. The title of his doctoral thesis was The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature. The father of communism was especially interested in the theory of clinamen, i.e. a minimal indeterminacy in the motion of atoms. For Epicurus, this theory was supposed to form a basis for helping him avoid absolute determinism, whereas for Marx it served as an explanation for the exceptional role played by the leaders of the proletariat. Clinamen was an important part of the overall structure of the world and society. But even more relevant were atoms: discrete, undifferentiated elements forming individuals known to us from sensory experience. One may ask here: why do we mention Epicurus in a text that is supposed to deal with Hayek? It is because Epicurus played an important role in shaping his theory as well—indirectly and directly. Hayek’s epistemology and ontology are based directly on philosophical assumptions developed by the founder of the Garden. -
The Price Mechanism and Resource Allocation
The Price Mechanism and Resource Allocation AS Economics Presentation 2005 Markets • A market is the place where buyers and sellers meet to exchange a product. Markets require: – Consumers i.e. buyers – Producers or firms i.e. sellers – Goods or services to trade (a recognizable output) • Examples of markets include: – Housing market: home owners and potential buyers – Labour market: employers and workers – Stock market: share owners and potential buyers – Foreign exchange market: trading currencies Sub Markets – Market Segmentation • The market for most goods can be segmented – broken down into sub markets • The market for houses – (i) sub markets for terraced, semi-detached and detached homes – (ii) the market for rented properties and owner occupied housing • The market for cars is made up of sub markets for family saloon cars, hatchbacks and high performance sports cars • The travel industry is heavily segmented Functions of the Price Mechanism • The price mechanism is the means by which decisions of consumers and businesses interact to determine the allocation of resources between different goods and services • (1) The signaling function – If prices are rising because of stronger demand from consumers, this is a signal to suppliers to expand output to meet the higher demand – When demand is strong, higher market prices act as an incentive to raise output (production) because the supplier stands to make a higher profit • (2) The rationing function – Prices serve to ration scarce resources when demand in a market outstrips supply – When there is a shortage of a product in the market, the price will rise and thus deter some consumers from purchasing the product Adam Smith and the ‘Invisible Hand’ • The 18th Century economist Adam Smith – one of the founding fathers of modern economics, described how the invisible or hidden hand of the market operated in a competitive market through the pursuit of self-interest to allocate resources in society’s best interest • This remains the central view of all free-market economists, i.e. -
Mises Research Report
CSSN Research Report 2021:2: The Mises Institute Network and Climate Policy. 9 Findings Policy Briefing July 2021 About the authors October, 2020. CSSN seeks to coordinate, conduct and support peer-reviewed research into the Dieter Plehwe is a Research Fellow at the Center for institutional and cultural dynamics of the political Civil Society Research at the Berlin Social Science conflict over climate change, and assist scholars in Center, Germany. Max Goldenbaum is a Student outreach to policymakers and the public. Assistant of the Center for Civil Society Research at the Berlin Social Science Center, Germany. Archana This report should be cited as: Ramanujam is a Graduate student in Sociology at Brown University, USA .Ruth McKie is a Senior Plehwe, Dieter, Max Goldenbaum, Archana Lecturer in Criminology at De Montfort University, Ramanujam, Ruth McKie, Jose Moreno, Kristoffer UK. Jose Moreno is a Predoctoral Fellow at Pompeu Ekberg, Galen Hall, Lucas Araldi, Jeremy Walker, Fabra University, Spain. Kristoffer Ekberg is a Robert Brulle, Moritz Neujeffski, Nick Graham, and Postdoctoral Historian at Chalmers University, Milan Hrubes. 2021. “The Mises Network and Sweden, Galen Hall is a recent graduate of Brown Climate Policy.” Policy Briefing, The Climate Social University and researcher in the Climate and Science Network. July 2021. Development Lab at Brown University, USA, Lucas https://www.cssn.org/ Araldi is a PhD student in Political Science at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Jeremy Walker is a researcher with the Climate Justice Research Centre at the University of Technology Sydney. Robert Brulle, Visiting Professor of Climate Social Science Network Environment and Society and Director of Research, Climate Social Science Network, Brown University. -
Delays in Public Goods
ISSN 1178-2293 (Online) University of Otago Economics Discussion Papers No. 1702 FEBRUARY 2017 Delays in Public Goods • Santanu Chatterjee, University of Georgia • Olaf Posch, Universität Hamburg and CREATES • Dennis Wesselbaum, University of Otago Address for correspondence: Dennis Wesselbaum Department of Economics University of Otago PO Box 56 Dunedin NEW ZEALAND Email: [email protected] Telephone: 64 3 479 8643 Delays in Public Goods∗ Santanu Chatterjee† Olaf Posch‡ Dennis Wesselbaum§ University of Georgia Universität Hamburg University of Otago and CREATES January 31, 2017 Abstract In this paper, we analyze the consequences of delays and cost overruns typically associated with the provision of public infrastructure in the context of a growing econ- omy. Our results indicate that uncertainty about the arrival of public capital can more than offset its positive spillovers for private-sector productivity. In a decentralized economy, unanticipated delays in the provision of public capital generate too much consumption and too little private investment relative to the first-best optimum. The characterization of the first-best optimum is also affected: facing delays in the arrival of public goods, a social planner allocates more resources to private investment and less to consumption relative to the first-best outcome in the canonical model (without delays). The presence of delays also lowers equilibrium growth, and leads to a diverging growth path relative to that implied by the canonical model. This suggests that delays in public capital provision may be a potential determinant of cross-country differences in income and economic growth. Keywords: Public goods, delays, time overrun, cost overrun, implementation lags, fiscal policy, economic growth.