Thoughts On Economics

1.0 Introduction This post duplicates an example in Richard M. Goodwin's Chaotic Economic Dynamics (Oxford University Press, 1990). At ...

A couple of posts from Sean Carroll led me to recall some of the interactions between economists and mathematical physicists. One interact...

Some time ago I mentioned Philip Ball's commentary on Gallegati, Keen, and Lux's critique of econophsyics. Cosma Shalizi now has r...

This seems hard to credit: "if current graduate students know anything of price theory, it would have had to have been self-taught, bec...

I simple way of deciding whether one wants to persue reading a paper or book is to look at its bibliography. If it is on a topic that one is...

I should alphabetize my list of blogs. The distinction between "Blogs I Like" and others has collapsed. The roll is for me, and I...

Mark Blaug, in "The Fundamental Theorems of Modern Welfare Economics, Historically Contemplated" ( History of Political Economy , ...

What does a mathematical proof show? In what sense, if any, do the objects which mathematicians reason about exist? A program of study on th...

"Professor Harcourt reviews a body of doctrine challenging the foundations of standard economics. The challenges, if valid, would confe...

I've recently read Saverio Fratini's "Reswitching of Techniques in an Intertemporal Equilibrium Model with Overlapping Generati...

Alex Tabarrok praises Phelps desire to develop a non-equilibrium, non-hydralic economics. “GVV”, a commenter, points out that Nicholas Kald...

The following figure is from Jeffrey M. Stonecash's "The Income Gap" ( Political Science and Politics , July 2006): Voting Dif...

Do mainstream economists have a theory of prices? General Equilibrium theory is obviously one candidate for such a theory. But economic the...

In keeping with my amateur status, I like the support of references. Other bloggers have different styles. I think I'll even provide ref...

Over on Crooked Timber, "reason" says he likes a James Galbraith quotation I refer to. Galbraith mentions Koopmans. I suppose G...

Léon Walras claimed that the economy would never be in equilibrium: "Equilibrium in production, like equilibrium in exchange, is an id...

Paul Krugman's New York Times column yesterday seems to be describing Hyman Minsky's financial instability hypothesis. The obviou...

"It is not true that individuals possess a prescriptive 'natural liberty' in their economic activities. There is no 'comp...

"You say, 'I don't see how demand can be said to have no influence on ... prices, unless constant returns ...' I take it th...