This book gives the reader a unique survey of the most recent advances in economic theory.

This book gives the reader a unique survey of advances in economic theory.

These articles should be helpful to anyone with training in economics.

The first volume of edited papers from the Tenth World Congress of the Econometric Society 2010.

This volume aims to interest students of modern economic theory in the history of economics. For this purpose, past economic theories are considered from the point of view of current economic theories and translated, if possible and necessary, into mathematical models. It is emphasized that the currently dominating mainstream theory is not the only possible theory, and that there are many past theories which have important significance to the advancement of economic theory in the present situation, or will have it in the near future.After a brief discussion on the history of economics from the point of view of contemporary economic theory, a bird's-eye view of the historical development of economics is given so that readers can see the significance of topics to be discussed in subsequent chapters in a proper historical perspective. These topics are carefully chosen to show not only what great economists in the past contributed to the development of economics, but also what suggestions for solving our own current problems we can obtain by reworking problems they had to face. The book can be used in advanced undergraduate as well as graduate classes on the history of economics. Mathematical techniques used can easily be understood by advanced undergraduates of economics major, since some models constructed originally by contemporary mathematical economists are carefully reformulated without losing the essence, basic calculus and the rudiments of linear algebra being sufficient for understanding.

Publisher description

In this study, Don Ross explores the relationship of economics to other branches of behavioral science, asking, in the course of his analysis, under what interpretation economics is a sound empirical science. The book explores the relationships between economic theory and the theoretical foundations of related disciplines that are relevant to the day-to-day work of economics—the cognitive and behavioral sciences. It asks whether the increasingly sophisticated techniques of microeconomic analysis have revealed any deep empirical regularities—whether technical improvement represents improvement in any other sense. Casting Daniel Dennett and Kenneth Binmore as its intellectual heroes, the book proposes a comprehensive model of economic theory that, Ross argues, does not supplant, but recovers the core neoclassical insights, and counters the caricaturish conception of neoclassicism so derided by advocates of behavioral or evolutionary economics. Because he approaches his topic from the viewpoint of the philosophy of science, Ross devotes one chapter to the philosophical theory and terminology on which his argument depends and another to related philosophical issues. Two chapters provide the theoretical background in economics, one covering developments in neoclassical microeconomics and the other treating behavioral and experimental economics and evolutionary game theory. The three chapters at the heart of the argument then apply theses from the philosophy of cognitive science to foundational problems for economic theory. In these chapters, economists will find a genuinely new way of thinking about the implications of cognitive science for economics, and cognitive scientists will find in economic behavior, a new testing site for the explanations of cognitive science.