A long tradition explains technological change as recombination. Within this tradition, this Element develops an innovative combinatorial model of technological change and tests it with 2,000 years of global GDP data and with data from US patents filed between 1835 and 2010. The model explains 1) the pace of technological change for a least the past two millennia, 2) patent citations and 3) the increasing complexity of tools over time. It shows that combining and modifying pre-existing goo...

From Crisis to Confidence not only describes the process which the economy must go through before a full recovery after the financial crash, it also describes the journey that must be travelled by the discipline of economics. As economics students and other commentators question post-war macroeconomics, Roger Koppl provides some of the answers needed to understand the long slump since 2008. A theory of confidence is needed in any economic framework that is to explain one of the most import...

The humble idea that experts are ordinary human beings leads to surprising conclusions about how to get the best possible expert advice. All too often, experts have monopoly power because of licensing restrictions or because they are government bureaucrats protected from both competition and the consequences of their decisions. This book argues that, in the market for expert opinion, we need real competition in which rival experts may have different opinions and new experts are free to ent...

Important and celebrated economist Leland Yeager is one of the architects of the 'Virginia School' of political economy that has produced two Nobel laureates (James Buchanan and Ronald Coase) and the Public Choice movement.A number of top class contributors have here been brought together to produce a festschrift in Yeager’s honor – edited by Roger Koppl, and including the aforementioned Buchanan, Gordon Tullock, David Colander, Deirdre McCloskey and Roger Garrison.

The theme of this volume is 'New Thinking in Austrian Political Economy'. It includes original research by scholars working within Austrian political economy. The contributors draw on insights from Austrian economics that shed new light on a range of relevant topics including: the role of culture in economic action, the political economy of post-disaster recovery, class structure, decentralized political orders, drones, institutional change, macroeconomics, and superstition and norms. Each...

In almost every corner of our private and public lives we rely on experts to advise us. This important species of labor is getting increasing attention from economists, who are beginning to learn how to apply their tools and assumptions to the problem of expertise. Under what conditions of supply and demand are experts likely to give us good advice? When is expert failure more likely? Do entrepreneurs challenge existing expertise? Are they experts themselves? And if economists are themselv...

The term the 'Entangled political economy' was first coined by Economist Richard E. Wagner of George Mason University who challenged the "additive" political economy paradigm with his "entangled political economy," which sees public and private entities as equal and entwined players in exchange relations. This volume examines entangled political economy from several distinct but complementary points of view. The history of entangled political economy is traced to Adam Smith and Carl Menger...

Subjectivism plays a fundamental role in many of the leading alternative schools in economics. This work explores major methodological issues in the area of radical subjectivism and includes contributions from Jorg Bibow, Peter Boettke, Maurizio Caserta, Steven Horwitz, Brian J. Loasby, Steven Parsons, Steve Sullivan and Carlo Zappia.

In this concise yet comprehensive history, Heinz D. Kurz traces the long arc of economic thought from its emergence in ancient Greece to its systematic presentation among the classical thinkers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to the influential work of scholars such as Paul Samuelson and Kenneth J. Arrow. With a keen eye for how economic insights are acquired, lost, and reborn, Kurz focuses on the dynamic individuals who give old ideas new life and the historical even...

“A hugely valuable contribution. . . . In setting out a defence of the best in economics, Rodrik has also provided a goal for the discipline as a whole.” —Martin Sandbu, Financial TimesIn the wake of the financial crisis and the Great Recession, economics seems anything but a science. In this sharp, masterfully argued book, Dani Rodrik, a leading critic from within, takes a close look at economics to examine when it falls short and when it works, to give a...

Why economics needs to focus on fairness and not just efficiencyOne of the central tenets of mainstream economics is Adam Smith's proposition that, given certain conditions, self-interested behavior by individuals leads them to the social good, almost as if orchestrated by an invisible hand. This deep insight has, over the past two centuries, been taken out of context, contorted, and used as the cornerstone of free-market orthodoxy. In Beyond the Invisible Hand...

Free-market economics has attempted to combine efficiency and freedom by emphasizing the need for neutral rules and meta-rules. These efforts have only been partly successful, for they have failed to address the deeper, normative arguments justifying – and limiting – coercion. This failure has thus left most advocates of free-market vulnerable to formulae which either emphasize expediency or which rely upon optimal social engineering to foster different notions of the common will and of th...