The Economic Theory of Structure and Change.

• Author: Malamud, Bernard

This book is about economic structure, the long-lived social and technological relations which propel and constrain economic activity and change. More precisely, it is about production structure, the input-output relations which link an economy's sectors. More precisely still, it is about models of production structure in economic theory, the visions of economic purpose which alternative models reveal, and the dynamics of system development which alternative models engender. In an earlier work, Foundations of Economics: Structures of Inquiry and Economic Theory, Baranzini and Scazzieri identify two competing lines of research in the advance of economic knowledge, one emphasizing social organization and production, the other emphasizing exchange, allocation, and choice. These classical and neoclassical perspectives reappear in the present volume, providing insights into changing economic structure and changing economic theory.

The book proposes classification schemes for a science of political economics, much in the tradition of Adolph Lowe's work On Economic Knowledge. Its nine demanding essays examine and extend theories of economic structure framed by Hicks, Leontief, Lowe, and Pasinetti on foundations laid by Boehm-Bawerk, Jevons, Marx, Quesnay, Ricardo, Smith and Walras. Contributions and challenges to the theory of economic structure and, in the nested spirit of this work, to the structure of economic theory, by Allais, Keynes, Schumpeter, and Sraffa are extensively treated as well. The volume's breadth and focus are conveyed by its contents: 1) Economic structure and political institutions by Lorenzo Ornaghi; 2) Economic structure and the theory of equilibrium by Takashi Negishi; 3) Structure and change within the circular theory of production by Heinrich Bortis; 4) Specification of structure and economic dynamics by Michael A. Landesmann and Roberto Scazzieri; 5) Vertical integration, growth and sequential change by Jean Magnan de Bornier; 6) The structural theory of economic growth by Harald Hagemann; 7) Economic theory and industrial evolution by Michio Morishima; 8) Production process and dynamic economics by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen; and 9) Economic structure: analytical perspectives by Mauro Baranzini and Roberto Scazzieri.

Bortis introduces two useful dichotomies for studying economic structure and change. He distinguishes between linear and circular models of production, concepts he borrows from Sraffa, and between vertical...