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Despite the dynamic development of the discipline of economics, the ways in which economics is taught and how it defines its basic principles have hardly changed, resulting in economics being criticised for its inability to provide relevant insights on global challenges. In response, this book defines new principles of economics and seeks to establish economics as the science of markets. A New Principles of Economics provides an alternative conceptual framework for the study of economics, integrating recent developments and researchin both economics and neighbouring social sciences. Adopting the structure of a standard principles text, it separates the study of markets as mechanisms and markets in their wider contexts. In doing so, a number of new perspectives are introduced, including approaching the economy as part and parcel of the Earth system; directly connecting the analysis of production with an analysis of technology and thermodynamic principles; explicitly treating markets as forms of social networks mediated by the institution of money; and reinstating the central role of distribution in political economy analysis. Drawing on the latest theories and research on the economy, and including both the natural and social sciences, this text provides a holistic introduction suitable for postgraduates and other advanced students.

1. Culture, ritual and economic style -- 2. The Chinese ritual economy as historical type -- 3. Institutions, ideas and ritual in the modern Chinese political economy -- 4. Local state, ritual and territorial competition -- 5. The ritual foundations of markets -- 6. Chinese enterprise, organization and ritual -- 7. Conclusion : deciphering the Chinese economic style.

"China's spectacular rise challenges established economic moulds, both at the national level, with the concept of 'state capitalism', and at the firm level, with the notion of indigenous 'Chinese management practices'. However, both Chinese and Western observers emphasise the transitional nature of the reforms, thereby leaving open the question as to whether China's reform process is really a fast catch-up process, with ultimate convergence to global standards, or something different. This book, by a leading economist and sinologist, argues that 'culture' is an exceptionally useful tool to help understand fully the current picture of the Chinese economy. Drawing on a range of disciplines including social psychology, cognitive sciences, institutional economics and Chinese studies, the book examines long-run path dependencies and cultural legacies, and shows how these contribute crucially to the current cultural construction of economic systems, business organisations and patterns of embedding the economy into society and politics"--Provided by publisher

'This book is an ambitious intellectual enterprise to build a naturalistic foundation for economics, with amazingly vast knowledge of physical, biological, social sciences and philosophy. Readers will discover that approaches and insights emergent in institutional studies, (social)-neuroscience, network theory, ecological economics, bio-culture dualistic evolution, etc. are persuasively placed in a grand unified frame. It is written in a good Hayekian tradition. I recommend this book particularly to young readers who aspire to go beyond a narrowly specified discipline in the age of expanding communicability of knowledge and ideas.' (Masahiko Aoki, Stanford University, US). -- 'Carsten Herrmann-Pillath's new book is an in-depth application of natural philosophy to economics that draws up an entirely new framework for economic analysis. It offers path-breaking insights on the interactions between human economic activity and nature, and outlines a convincing solution to the long-standing reductionism controversy. A must-read for everyone interested in the philosophical underpinnings of economics as a science.' (Ulrich Witt, Max Planck Institute of Economics, Jena, Germany). -- '"Big picture" philosophy of economics drifted into a dull cul-de-sac as it became obsessively focused on falsifiability and rationality. In this book, Carsten Herrmann-Pillath pushes the field back onto the open highway by locating economics in the larger frameworks of metaphysics, evolutionary dynamics and information theory. This is large-scale, ambitious synthesis of ideas of the kind we expect from time to time to see devoted to physics and biology. Why should economics merit anything less? But of course, this kind of intellectual tapestry must await the appearance of an unusually devoted scholar, with special patience and eccentric independence from the pressure for quick returns that characterizes academic life. In the person of Herrmann-Pillath, this scholar has appeared. No one who wants to examine economics whole and in its richest context should miss his virtuoso performance in this book.' (Don Ross, University of Cape Town, South Africa and Georgia State University, US).

In recent sociological studies of markets, especially financial markets, researchers have argued that economics is performative (MacKenzie, Callon et al.). By this they refer to the observation that theories such as the Black-Scholes formula do not simply describe reality, but contributed to the regulatory creation of financial markets in which the agents started to adopt behavioral patterns that correspond to the theory, also relying on artefacts that have been created by the originators of the theory. This notion of performativity fits also other recent uses of language theory in economics, such as the theory of organizational forms in organizational ecology (Carroll and Hannan) or John Searle's theory of institutions. The paper builds on this, especially Searle's approach, and explores the underlying cognitive operations. It is argued that performativity builds on the human capacity to generate new meanings from existing concepts. This is elaborated in the theory of conceptual blending that has been developed by Fauconnier and Turner. For example, blends are a typical phenomenon in the emergence of new business models, such as in the dotcom bubble. The theory of conceptual blending can be based on neuroscientific insights into the operations of the human brain, corresponding to Searle's proposal to ground institutions in neurophysiological dispositions. -- Searle's theory of institutions ; financial markets ; emergence of novelty ; conceptual blending ; neural theory of metaphor

Bd. 1: Transaktionstheoretische Grundlagen. - Marburg : Metropolis Verl., 2001. - 736 S. - ISBN 3-89518-338-5; Bd. 2: Evolutionäre Politische Ökonomie. - Marburg : Metropolis Verl., 2004. - 836 S. - ISBN 3-89518-449-7