Suchergebnisse

The burgeoning of abstract economic analysis since about 1950
makes the need for well-conceived consolidations and codifications at
the textbook level peculiarly important. The task is a challenging one,
demanding the attainment of a compromise between the "mathematics for
economists" catalogues of techniques and the highly specialized and
formalized "theorem-proof" sequences of the high-theory journals. It
requires that skilful blend of the rigorous and the heuristic, the
multidimensional and the diagrammatic, the logical and the intuitive,
found in the teacher-born. Lancaster has succeeded admirably in finding
the optimal mixture.

Ricardo offers us the supreme intellectual achievement, unattainable by weaker spirits, of adopting a hypothetical world remote from experience as though it were the world of experience and then living in it consistently. With most of his successors common sense cannot help breaking in—with injury to their logical consistency. (J. M. Keynes, The General Theory, p. 192.)What was the contribution of Lord Keynes to the development of general equilibrium theory? It is becoming possible now, with the passage of a quarter-century, to view Keynes's General Theory as an (important) episode in the continuous development of general neo-classical systems. From one vantage point, it is paradoxical that his work should have been accepted as the Grand Departure from its neo-classical progenitors—even though Keynes presented it in that light—since his interpretations of these systems are almost always kept visible for purposes of comparison. On the other hand, Keynes's impact on economic policy, on the methodology and analytics of quantitative economics, and on the working economist's "vision" of reality, may be seen even today to be of that order of power rightfully termed "revolutionary."

A Practitioner of the social sciences may be forgiven his moments of Parkinsonian cynicism. At such times it seems that "research" in his field consists in the derivation of ponderous solutions to problems concocted solely to exhaust the time available from a growing body of print-minded confreres. Rare or plentiful as such moments may be—and in economics they are not unknown—they do inspire an enhanced appreciation of skillful applications of fundamental techniques to current and important social problems. In the case in point, Hitch and McKean have produced a work whose analytics are basic but imaginative and whose problem area is vital indeed.

The second in a two volume tribute to Walter Isard, the first being "New Frontiers in Regional Science", this book looks at dynamics and conflict in regional structural change. Together they contain 50 papers by experts in this field, and look at subjects such as location theory

The first in a two volume tribute to Walter Isard, the second being "Dynamics and Conflict in Regional structural Change", this book looks at new frontiers in regional science. Together they contains 50 papers by experts in this field, and look at subjects such as location theory