When President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher adopted the neoliberal doctrine as the paradigm of economics, there was no evidence that the move would have been successful, but thirty years on, the recurrent crises that culminated in 2008 suggest a serious mis-match between expectations and outcomes: a re-examination of the paradigm is in order. This book focuses on Milton Friedman’s formulation of the neoliberal doctrine, and analyses two aspects that were essential to turning it into a fully-fledged paradigm: the attribution of scientific status to positive economics, which led to informing public policies on the requirements of the market; and the characterisation of economic freedom as capable of promoting political freedom, which led to identifying free market with democracy. The book exposes Friedman’s methodological argument for attributing positive economics scientific status as a failure, and his characterisation of economic freedom as a delusion; it identifies in the emergence as the mainstream in economics of the neoclassical synthesis, which borrowed from Walras’ the mathematical treatment of equilibrium but not the ethical and social framework in which it was inscribed, a development that facilitated the transition from the Keynesian to the neoliberal paradigm. Dr. Mosini shows that the gigantic bail-outs carried out courtesy of the public purse, which institutionalised the practice of collectivising losses while keeping profits private, were no accident, but the consequence of the rethinking of the function of lender of last resort according to Friedman’s conception of rationality in relation to risk, combined with his interpretation of the 1930s recession. The book concludes that the neoliberal paradigm has served the interests of the economically powerful social strata it was designed to benefit extremely well, but that the deep, and deepening, injustice it has brought about calls for a complete rethinking of the paradigm of economics according to ethical principles respectful of human values. This book should be of interest to students and researchers of Political Economy, Economic Methodology, History of Economic Thought and Philosophy.

'Techno-Economic Paradigms' presents a series of essays discussing one of the most interesting and talked-about socio-economic theories of our times: techno-economic paradigm shifts.

In a 24/7 world and a global economy, there is no doubt that relationships impact virtually every economic transaction. In Relationship Economics, Lindon Robison and Bryan Ritchie argue that what needs to be understood is not just whether relationships matter (which, of course, they do), but also, how much, and in what circumstances they should matter. Providing a rigorous and measurable definition of the way that relationships among individuals create a capital, social capital, that can be saved, spent, and used like other forms of capital, Robison and Ritchie use numerous examples and insightful analysis, to explain how social capital shapes our ability to reduce poverty, understand corruption, encourage democracy, facilitate income equality, and respond to globalization. The first part of the book explains how social capital can be manipulated, stored, expended, and invested. The second part explores how levels of social capital within relationships influence economic transactions both positively and negatively, which in turn shape poverty levels, economic efficiency, levels and types of political participation, and institutional structures.

This volume offers contributions to questions relating to the economics of innovation and technological change. Central to the development of new technologies are institutional environments and among the topics discussed are the roles played by universities and the ways in which the allocation of funds affects innovation.

Ecological Economics for the Anthropocene provides an urgently needed alternative to the long-dominant neoclassical economic paradigm of the free market, which has focused myopically—even fatally—on the boundless production and consumption of goods and services without heed to environmental consequences. The emerging paradigm for ecological economics championed in this new book recenters the field of economics on the fact of the Earth's limitations, requiring a total reconfiguration of the goals of the economy, how we understand the fundamentals of human prosperity, and, ultimately, how we assess humanity's place in the community of beings. Each essay in this volume contributes to an emerging, revolutionary agenda based on the tenets of ecological economics and advances new conceptions of justice, liberty, and the meaning of an ethical life in the era of the Anthropocene. Essays highlight the need to create alternative signals to balance one-dimensional market-price measurements in judging the relationships between the economy and the Earth's life-support systems. In a lively exchange, the authors question whether such ideas as "ecosystem health" and the environmental data that support them are robust enough to inform policy. Essays explain what a taking-it-slow or no-growth approach to economics looks like and explore how to generate the cultural and political will to implement this agenda. This collection represents one of the most sophisticated and realistic strategies for neutralizing the threat of our current economic order, envisioning an Earth-embedded society committed to the commonwealth of life and the security and true prosperity of human society.

A century ago, the idea of 'the economy' didn't exist. Now economics is the supreme ideology of our time, with its own rules and language. The trouble is, most of us can't speak it. This is damaging democracy. Dangerous agendas are hidden inside mathematical wrappers; controversial policies are presented as 'proven' by the models of economic 'science'. Government is being turned over to a publicly unaccountable technocratic elite. The Econocracy reveals that economics is too important to be left to the economists - and shows us how we can begin to participate more fully in the decisions which affect all our futures.

A radical reinterpretation of Adam Smith that challenges economists, moral philosophers, political theorists, and intellectual historians to rethink him—and why he matters Adam Smith has long been recognized as the father of modern economics. More recently, scholars have emphasized his standing as a moral philosopher—one who was prepared to critique markets as well as to praise them. But Smith’s contributions to political theory are still underappreciated and relatively neglected. In this bold, revisionary book, Paul Sagar argues that not only have the fundamentals of Smith’s political thought been widely misunderstood, but that once we understand them correctly, our estimations of Smith as economist and as moral philosopher must radically change. Rather than seeing Smith either as the prophet of the free market, or as a moralist who thought the dangers of commerce lay primarily in the corrupting effects of trade, Sagar shows why Smith is more thoroughly a political thinker who made major contributions to the history of political thought. Smith, Sagar argues, saw war, not commerce, as the engine of political change and he was centrally concerned with the political, not moral, dimensions of—and threats to—commercial societies. In this light, the true contours and power of Smith’s foundational contributions to western political thought emerge as never before. Offering major reinterpretations of Smith’s political, moral, and economic ideas, Adam Smith Reconsidered seeks to revolutionize how he is understood. In doing so, it recovers Smith’s original way of doing political theory, one rooted in the importance of history and the necessity of maintaining a realist sensibility, and from which we still have much to learn.