Theory Of Regular Economies

This book presents a comprehensive treatment of the theory of regular economies, which is one of the most advanced topics in modern general equilibrium theory, emphasizing the basic ideas, the tools and the important applications. Although many notions and tools of differential topology are required to understand the theory, the author chooses a minimum of them and heuristically arranges them; that is, instead of lumping together all the necessary mathematics, the author puts at the beginning of each chapter the minimum mathematics required for the economic analysis of the chapter, so that the reader will not only save much effort on the mathematics but also directly understand how successfully the mathematics is used for the economic issues.

This book brings together the author's pioneering work, written over the last twenty years, on the use of differential methods in general equilibrium theory.

General Equilibrium Theory studies the properties and operation of free market economies. The field is a response to a series of questions originally outlined by Leon Walras about the operation of markets and posed by Frank Hahn in the following way: OCyDoes the pursuit of private interest, through a system of interconnected deregulated markets, lead not to chaos but to coherence OCo and if so, how is that achieved?OCO This is always an apt question, but particularly so given the OCyGlobal Financial CrisisOCO that emerged from the operation of market economies in the Americas and Europe in mid to late 2008. The answer that General Equilibrium Theory provides to the Walras-Hahn question is that, under certain conditions coherence is possible, while under certain other conditions chaos, in various forms, is likely to prevail. The conditionality of either outcome is not always well understood OCo neither by proponents of, or antagonists to, the OCyfree market positionOCO. Consequently, this book attempts to show something of what General Equilibrium Theory has to say about the wisdom or otherwise of always relying on OCymarket forcesOCO to manage complex socio-economic systems. Sample Chapter(s). Chapter 1: General Equilibrium Theory: An Overview (138 KB). Contents: General Equilibrium Theory: An Overview; Existence of Equilibrium: Sufficient Conditions; Existence of Equilibrium: Necessary Conditions; Equilibrium and Irreducibility: Some Empirical Evidence; Existence of Equilibrium Under Alternative Income Conditions; Existence of Walrasian Equilibrium in Some NonOCoArrow-Debreu Environments; Uniqueness of Equilibrium; Stability of Equilibrium; Optimality of Equilibrium; Comparative Statics of Equilibrium States; Empirical Evidence on General Equilibrium; General Equilibrium Theory in Retrospect. Readership: Advanced undergraduates and graduate students in economics; economists interested in economic theory."

This book contains the most sustained and serious attack on mainstream, neoclassical economics in more than forty years. Nelson and Winter focus their critique on the basic question of how firms and industries change overtime. They marshal significant objections to the fundamental neoclassical assumptions of profit maximization and market equilibrium, which they find ineffective in the analysis of technological innovation and the dynamics of competition among firms. To replace these assumptions, they borrow from biology the concept of natural selection to construct a precise and detailed evolutionary theory of business behavior. They grant that films are motivated by profit and engage in search for ways of improving profits, but they do not consider them to be profit maximizing. Likewise, they emphasize the tendency for the more profitable firms to drive the less profitable ones out of business, but they do not focus their analysis on hypothetical states of industry equilibrium. The results of their new paradigm and analytical framework are impressive. Not only have they been able to develop more coherent and powerful models of competitive firm dynamics under conditions of growth and technological change, but their approach is compatible with findings in psychology and other social sciences. Finally, their work has important implications for welfare economics and for government policy toward industry.

The economic framework; Introduction to the mathematics; Differentiable manifolds and mapping, tangents, vectorfields; Regular equilibria. A first approach; Scarf's example; Excess demand functions; Debreu's theorem on the finiteness of the number of equilibria of an economy; Continuity of the Walras correspondence for demand functions; Density of transversal intersection; Regular economies; Stability questions and the number of equilibria; Large economies; Some standard notation.

This book is devoted to the mathematical analysis of models of economic dynamics and equilibria. These models form an important part of mathemati cal economics. Models of economic dynamics describe the motion of an economy through time. The basic concept in the study of these models is that of a trajectory, i.e., a sequence of elements of the phase space that describe admissible (possible) development of the economy. From all trajectories, we select those that are" desirable," i.e., optimal in terms of a certain criterion. The apparatus of point-set maps is the appropriate tool for the analysis of these models. The topological aspects of these maps (particularly, the Kakutani fixed-point theorem) are used to study equilibrium models as well as n-person games. To study dynamic models we use a special class of maps which, in this book, are called superlinear maps. The theory of superlinear point-set maps is, obviously, of interest in its own right. This theory is described in the first chapter. Chapters 2-4 are devoted to models of economic dynamics and present a detailed study of the properties of optimal trajectories. These properties are described in terms of theorems on characteristics (on the existence of dual prices) and turnpike theorems (theorems on asymptotic trajectories). In Chapter 5, we state and study a model of economic equilibrium. The basic idea is to establish a theorem about the existence of an equilibrium state for the Arrow-Debreu model and a certain generalization of it.

This book was originally published by Macmillan in 1936. It was voted the top Academic Book that Shaped Modern Britain by Academic Book Week (UK) in 2017, and in 2011 was placed on Time Magazine's top 100 non-fiction books written in English since 1923. Reissued with a fresh Introduction by the Nobel-prize winner Paul Krugman and a new Afterword by Keynes’ biographer Robert Skidelsky, this important work is made available to a new generation. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money transformed economics and changed the face of modern macroeconomics. Keynes’ argument is based on the idea that the level of employment is not determined by the price of labour, but by the spending of money. It gave way to an entirely new approach where employment, inflation and the market economy are concerned. Highly provocative at its time of publication, this book and Keynes’ theories continue to remain the subject of much support and praise, criticism and debate. Economists at any stage in their career will enjoy revisiting this treatise and observing the relevance of Keynes’ work in today’s contemporary climate.

The concept of general equilibrium, one of the central components of economic theory, explains the behavior of supply, demand, and prices by showing that supply and demand exist in balance through pricing mechanisms. The mathematical tools and properties for this theory have developed over time to accommodate and incorporate developments in economic theory, from multiple markets and economic agents to theories of production. Yves Balasko offers an extensive, up-to-date look at the standard theory of general equilibrium, to which he has been a major contributor. This book explains how the equilibrium manifold approach can be usefully applied to the general equilibrium model, from basic consumer theory and exchange economies to models with private ownership of production. Balasko examines properties of the standard general equilibrium model that are beyond traditional existence and optimality. He applies the theory of smooth manifolds and mappings to the multiplicity of equilibrium solutions and related discontinuities of market prices. The economic concepts and differential topology methods presented in this book are accessible, clear, and relevant, and no prior knowledge of economic theory is necessary. General Equilibrium Theory of Value offers a comprehensive foundation for the most current models of economic theory and is ideally suited for graduate economics students, advanced undergraduates in mathematics, and researchers in the field.

General Equilibrium Theory studies the properties and operation of free market economies. The field is a response to a series of questions originally outlined by Leon Walras about the operation of markets and posed by Frank Hahn in the following way: ‘Does the pursuit of private interest, through a system of interconnected deregulated markets, lead not to chaos but to coherence — and if so, how is that achieved?’ This is always an apt question, but particularly so given the ‘Global Financial Crisis’ that emerged from the operation of market economies in the Americas and Europe in mid to late 2008.The answer that General Equilibrium Theory provides to the Walras-Hahn question is that, under certain conditions coherence is possible, while under certain other conditions chaos, in various forms, is likely to prevail. The conditionality of either outcome is not always well understood — neither by proponents of, or antagonists to, the ‘free market position’. Consequently, this book attempts to show something of what General Equilibrium Theory has to say about the wisdom or otherwise of always relying on ‘market forces’ to manage complex socio-economic systems.