This book gathers a collection of multidisciplinary essays by Jess Huerta de Soto, examining the dynamic processes of social cooperation which characterize the market, with particular emphasis on the role of both entrepreneurship and institutions.

Provides a comprehensive approach to productivity and efficiency analysis using economic and econometric theory.

"The book takes on a systematic treatment of dynamic decision making and performance measurement. The analytical foundations of the dynamic production technology are introduced and developed in detail for several primal representations of the technology with an emphasis on dynamic directional distance functions. Dynamic cost minimization and dynamic profit maximization are developed for primal and dual representations of the dynamic technology. A dynamic production environment can be characterized as one where current production decisions impact future production possibilities. Consequently, the dynamic perspective of production relationships necessarily involves the close interplay between stock and flow elements in the transformation process, and how current decisions impact the changes in future stocks. Stock elements in the production transformation process can involve physical elements that can be effectively employed in the transformation process that can include the stock of technical knowledge and expertise available to the decision maker during the decision period. The dynamic generalization of concepts measuring the production structure (e.g., economies of scale, economies of scope, capacity utilization) and performance (e.g., allocative, scale and technical inefficiency, productivity) are developed from primal and dual perspectives"--

This ambitious work presents a critique of traditional welfare theory and proposes a new approach to it. Radical economists Robin Hahnel and Michael Albert argue that an improved theory of social welfare can consolidate and extend recent advances in microeconomic theory, and generate exciting new results as well. The authors show that once the traditional "welfare paradigm" is appropriately modified, a revitalized welfare theory can clarify the relationship between individual and social rationalitya task that continues to be of interest to mainstream and nonmainstream economists alike. Hahnel and Albert show how recent work in the theory of the labor process, externalities, public goods, and endogenous preferences can advance research in welfare theory. In a series of important theorems, the authors extend the concept of Pareto optimality to dynamic contexts with changing preferences and thus highlight the importance of institutional bias. This discussion provides the basis for further analysis of the properties and consequences of private and public enterprise and of markets and central planning. Not surprisingly, Hahnel and Albert reach a number of conclusions at odds with conventional wisdom. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.