论主流经济学的危机与革命

古典经济学家提出了劳动价值论,并认为劳动是商品,他们的认识反映了当时社会的实际,推动了历史的进步.但是,在"资本集中和土地私有"以后他们的认识就与现实相矛盾了,主流经济学家们因为没能解决当时提出的问题而陷入了危机.马克思证明了劳动二重性理论,发展了劳动价值论,他提出了劳动力商品范畴,证明了剩余价值理论,引发了经济学的革命,从而解决了那个时代提出的问题,推动了历史的进步.在社会主义市场经济中,主流经济学家因为无法说明劳动者的工资和利息收入问题而再次陷入了危机,这可能预示了经济学革命的再次来临.作者认为,只有通过理论革命,证明劳动本身具有价值,证明资本收入具有劳动收入的性质才能解决现实社会提出的问题.     

Future generations and economic activities: The case of the social discount rate

The objective of this article is to show the difficulties economists have when they try to answer the following question: What can economists do to promote a fair and “safe” economic development? Or otherwise said: what should we do to promote more equity between generations in an environmental perspective? The purpose of this article is not to develop new tools or policies but to give an overview of some theoretical and practical problems linked to the connection between environment, intergenerational justice and economic activities. The first section focuses on the reasons for the need to develop a reflection about intergenerational equity in the economics of the environment. The second section investigates some related theoretical problems, and the third section shows the practical difficulties economists have when dealing with intertemporal economic decisions; that is, trying to take intergenerational equity into account—in particular the choice of a discount rate for public investments.     

The road to rationalisation: A history of “Where the Empirical Lives” (or has lived) in consumer choice theory

This paper examines the different ways that economists have characterised the empirical content of modern consumer choice theory. There has been general agreement among economists that each stage in the development of the theory has been associated with an improvement in the theory's empirical content, and yet there has been no agreement about what exactly the empirical content of consumer choice theory is at any stage in the process. I call this the problem of observational ambiguity. The paper historically documents this problem, links it to various theoretical developments, and relates it to debates in contemporary economic theory.     

"The Reality of the Present and the Challenge of the Future": J. Fagg Foster for the Twenty-First Century

This paper revisits J. Fagg Foster’s early assessment of the relevance of John Maynard Keynes’s theory of institutional economics. In his view, neither institutionalists nor most of Keynes’s followers really recognized the importance of Keynes’s theoretical insights. I examine Foster’s views on economic theory, with a particular focus on monetary theory. I apply Foster’s approach to what is now called modern money theory, an approach developed by heterodox economists working in the institutionalist and post-Keynesian traditions. I argue that this approach is consistent with Foster’s, and it offers a way forward to policy formation for the twenty-first century.     

The “Treasury View”: An (un-)expected return?

Abstract

By examining the rhetorical use of an old piece of economic theory by some contemporary economists, this paper intends to report on “how today's economists conduct a public policy debate”. This paper is neither a scholarly history of the interwar debate nor a sophisticated critique of current economic policy. It is an attempt to link the policy and theoretical arguments of two similar debates separated by nearly 80 years. The second part of the paper demonstrates that the (un-)expected return of the Treasury View is a case study illustrating two very different modelling strategies.     

Sraffa: the theoretical world of the ‘old classical economists’ *

Sraffa's mature work is seen here as a re-discovery and resumption of the ‘submerged and forgotten’ approach of the ‘old classical economists from Adam Smith to Ricardo’. Wages determined by broad economic and social forces entail there product prices determined independently of demand and supply functions. Some main questions raised for the modern economists by this radical reorientation of economic theory are then considered in order to conclude that it is aginst that background that Sraffa's mature work should be set with its three main contributions, of a rediscovery of the approach, of a complete and transparent solution of the problems of price determination it raises, and of its application to the critique of neoclassical theory. Among several developments originating from Sraffa's seminal work, two are singled out for mention: (i) the possibility of deficiencies of aggregate demand in the long period no less than in the short one; this follows naturally from the abandonment of the neoclassical theory of distribution, of which the role of the interset rate in equilibrating savings and investment is a corollary; (ii) the question of the distribution of the surplus between wages and profits in a modern economy where wages are no longer confined to subsistence.     

经济发展、模型再造与中国经济发展方式的转变

经济发展理论是社会经济发展的一种理论反映,源于斯密和李嘉图为代表的古典经济学派,是二战后在发达国家广泛流行的经济理论,其大体经历了三个发展阶段。现代经济发展理论及模型的建立强调科学技术进步、人力资本积累对经济发展的促进作用。但是,发达国家经济学家自身存在的认识论缺陷使其不可能科学完整地建立经济发展理论及模型,因此必须遵循马克思的方法论从理论为实际的反映入手建立科学模型,并指导中国社会经济建设实践。特别是经济发展方式的转变实践。     

A theory of cooperation in games with an application to market socialism

Abstract

Economic theory has focused almost exclusively on how humans compete with each other in their economic activity, culminating in general equilibrium (Walras–Arrow–Debreu) and game theory (Cournot–Nash). Cooperation in economic activity is, however, important, and is virtually ignored. Because our models influence our view of the world, this theoretical lacuna biases economists’ interpretation of economic behavior. Here, I propose models that provide micro-foundations for how cooperation is decentralized by economic agents. It is incorrect, in particular, to view competition as decentralized and cooperation as organized only by central diktat. My approach is not to alter preferences, which is the strategy behavioral economists have adopted to model cooperation, but rather to alter the way that agents optimize. Whereas Nash optimizers view other players in the game as part of the environment (parameters), Kantian optimizers view them as part of action. When formalized, this approach resolves the two major failures of Nash optimization from a welfare viewpoint – the Pareto inefficiency of equilibria in common-pool resource problems (the tragedy of the commons) and the inefficiency of equilibria in public-good games (the free rider problem). An application to market socialism shows that the problems of efficiency and distribution can be completely separated: the dead-weight loss of taxation disappears.     

Ethics,human behavior and the methodology of social economics

Social economists differ among themselves but are united in rejecting the rational actor model. They insist that individuals are more than economic actors; they arepersons with ethical values who live in community. That agreement over fundamentals leads social economists to embrace a methodological approach that differs substantially from the mainstream of economics. They (sometimes explicitly but usually implicitly), engage in a special form of storytelling known in the philosophy of social science as pattern modeling. Instead of using a pre-existing theoretical framework, such as rational choice theory, to logically construct a story, this type of story is constructed empirically from the bottom up through the use of case studies. The article concludes with a specific consideration of Albert Hirschman's methodology to illustrate the storytelling approach of a first rate and well-recognized social economist.     

Dr. Anderson and the Austrians: Price formation as a cumulative process

The formation of money prices is a pervasive feature of market economies. The theoretical explanation of money prices requires economists to recognize that prices are the result of a cumulative process in which past prices and practices create present prices, which are the basis of the plans and actions that will create future prices and practices. Lavoie’s interpretive economics embraces the historical element in economic theory and furnishes an approach congenial to studying the market as a cumulative process.     

Calls for change. The scientific status of economic theory and the future of democracy: A review of three recent contributions

Abstract

After the last financial crisis, economic theory and economists have largely lost their credibility. Not having been able to foresee and explain the recession, they have clearly shown that a deep methodological reform of the discipline is necessary. With its restrictive assumptions and the self-referentiality of formal models, mainstream economics has indeed become highly unrealistic and therefore unable to face the deep and evident problems of capitalistic society. The books reviewed in this paper try to criticize economic theory from three closely related points of view: the technical drift that has endangered democracy and annulled the role of citizens in public choices, the sometimes obscure role of economists and the way through which articles of low scientific relevance are published, and finally the decisive role of the Nobel Prize in economics to legitimize the market turn begun in the 1970s. Considering such a discouraging picture, it is necessary to ask whether there is still hope for reforming economics and if, possibly returning to the classics of economic thought, it is still possible to carry out a struggle based on ideas and not on dogmatic prejudices.     

HOW THEORY CAME TO ENGLISH CLASSICAL ECONOMICS*

The confidently theoretical method of English classical economics is traced to the Enlightenment's struggle to resolve the disputes between rationalism and anti-rationalism which had dominated the 17th century. It is argued that, in an attempt to resolve these disputes, several Enlightenment authors, including David Hume and Dugald Stewart, sought to unite empiricism with the notion of law-like universe by arguing that economic laws are no more than general facts apparent from everyday life. This position, by denying that theory had any connection with the hypothetical, the instrumental or the abstract, blurred the distinction between theory and fact, and taught Classical economists to see their theorising as fact. This position thereby gave the Classical economists licence to pursue their theoretical speculations, free from any doubts or uncertainties about their theorising.     

Reading Elinor Ostrom through a Gender Perspective

This paper concentrates on the scientific work of Elinor Ostrom (1933–2012), who for more than forty years carried out theoretical and empirical research on common-pool resources. Ostrom theorizes that the commons often prevent resource exhaustion more effectively than the state, international institutions, or private owners. However, one of the foundations of commons, as an alternative program to the private/state dualism, ought to be the principle of equality that includes a gender perspective in theory and practice. The goal of this article is to provide thoughtful ways of incorporating gender in economic research from the viewpoint of feminist epistemology and to indicate the place of gender in Ostrom’s work. The methodology of this study could be used for reading economic publications through a gender perspective as well as for inspiring economists to use both gender as a category of analysis and gender-sensitive language in their theoretical and empirical studies.     

Early contributions to the economics of consumption as a social phenomenon

During the 1920s some American women economists developed theoretical, empirical and historical analyses that constituted a theory of consumption. The original formulations of this approach were based on the view, theorised by T. Veblen, that consuming certain goods makes it possible to identify with specific social groups. These analyses were explicitly alternative to the theories of consumption based on marginal utility. In the 1930s, however, the analyses of a second generation of women economists became exclusively empirical and the theoretical features that made the approach original and an alternative to marginalism were lost.     

Why Schumpeter has had so little influence on today’s main line economics, and why this may be changing

While Schumpeter’s broad theory of how capitalist economies worked articulated in his Theory of Economic Development received strong attention in his lifetime, it was neoclassical economic theory that took hold of the profession in the last half of the twentieth century, and today few economists even read Schumpeter. The first part of this essay considers the reasons why Schumpeter largely has been ignored. However, recent developments have increased the interests of economists in innovation and in innovation driven economic activity, and the time now may be ripe for a renaissance of Schumpeterian economics. The second part of this essay provides a sketch of what an economics text-book, written from a Schumpeterian perspective, might look like.     

转型经济学的框架变迁与中国范式的全球价值——纪念中国改革开放30周年

中国30年改革开放为全球转型国家提供了有价值的参照体系,也为经济学家探讨转型经济学提供了丰富的视角.文章系统梳理了经济转型理论的历史性变迁,探讨新古典经济学在建立转型理论框架中所遭遇的理论困境和内在逻辑缺失,同时着重剖析了转型经济学中存在的两大基本争议,即渐进式变迁和激进式变迁的争议以及强制性变迁和诱致性变迁的争议.文章最后对中国经济改革进行了理论提炼,揭示了经济转型的中国范式的内涵及其全球意义.     

Ivan Kinkel's (1883–1945) theory of economic development

Abstract

This paper presents and discusses the “Attempt at Constructing a New Theory of Economic Development and Cultural Cycles”, published by the Bulgarian economist and sociologist of Russian origin, Ivan Kinkel (1883–1945) in 1921. Kinkel's theory, although unknown outside Bulgarian academic circles, carries a range of original ideas and new insights within the frame of Schmollerprogramm. It emphasises the importance of studying economic development as sociocultural evolutionary change, focuses on the role of unity in social life and the plurality of human motives and attempts to methodologically link theory and history into a multidisciplinary approach. Kinkel's work in general, and his theory of cyclical development in particular, can not only be of value for the study of economic thought and the diffusion of ideas, but can also offer insights into the forces underlying the profound changes that we have been witnessing recently.     

Monopoly Power and Stagflation

Post Keynesian economists have followed Joan Robinson's criticism of general equilibrium theory as abolishing history by allowing all contracts to be executed today for all future contingencies. This was the justification for the support of financial innovation to provide for the completeness of futures markets. The recent crisis has shown that force of history. Instead, many evolutionary and Keynesian economists have suggested the approach of cumulative causation as an approach that includes history and eschews equilibrium. This approach may provide a way to take history seriously in economic analysis.     

Josef Steindl's relations to Italian economics ∗

The paper discusses Steindl's impact on Italian economists, both through his writings and through direct personal influence. Three representative Italian economists are considered: Sylos Labini, Becattini and Salvati. This provides the opportunity for a cursory discussion of some aspects of Steindl's theory of stagnation and market forms, of his methodology, of post-Keynesian distribution theory. The limits of this latter theory are discussed with reference to the Smithian ‘competition of capitals’ and the Sraffian assumption of a uniform rate of profits; a possible reconciliation between the post-Keynesian and Sraffian approaches to distribution is then sketched. Steindl's role in the Trieste School for advanced economic studies is also briefly illustrated.