Increasing Returns And Economic Analysis

Recognizing increasing returns disrupts much of the established wisdom in economic analysis, making money non-neutral, equity conflict with freedom, and encouraging goods with increasing returns efficient. This book discusses these problems and ways they can be handled, helping to explain phenomena in the real world.

Makes available important articles on increasing returns as related to the size of the economy

Selected papers from many leading Australian, American, Asian, British and European economists of an international conference at Monash University sparked by the first Australian visit by Kenneth J. Arrow, Nobel Laureate in Economics. Part 1 extends the recently emerged New Classical Economics which uses inframarginal analysis to formally examine classical economic problems of specialization with insights on trade, growth, and many other issues. Part 2 analyses the implications of increasing returns and the associated non-perfect competition on some macro problems like the effects of nominal aggregate demand on output and the price level. Part 3 analyses the relationships of information, returns to scale, and issues of resources and trade.

This study analyzes increasing returns to scale using general equilibrium theory to take into account the interactions between production in the public and private sectors. It also explores how the redistribution of income has been effected by financing the private sector.

Selected papers from many leading Australian, American, Asian, British and European economists of an international conference at Monash University sparked by the first Australian visit by Kenneth J. Arrow, Nobel Laureate in Economics. Part 1 extends the recently emerged New Classical Economics which uses inframarginal analysis to formally examine classical economic problems of specialization with insights on trade, growth, and many other issues. Part 2 analyses the implications of increasing returns and the associated non-perfect competition on some macro problems like the effects of nominal aggregate demand on output and the price level. Part 3 analyses the relationships of information, returns to scale, and issues of resources and trade.

This book brings together Professor Arthur’s pioneering article and provide a comprehensive presentation of his exciting vision of an economics that incorporates increasing returns. After a decade of resistance from economists, these ideas are now being widely discussed and adopted, as Kenneth Arrow recounts in his foreword. In fundamental ways they are changing our views of the working economy.

The authors show how a common approach that emphasizes the three-way interaction among increasing returns, transportation costs, and the movement of productive factors can be applied to a wide range of issues in urban, regional, and international economics. Since 1990 there has been a renaissance of theoretical and empirical work on the spatial aspects of the economy—that is, where economic activity occurs and why. Using new tools—in particular, modeling techniques developed to analyze industrial organization, international trade, and economic growth—this "new economic geography" has emerged as one of the most exciting areas of contemporary economics. The authors show how seemingly disparate models reflect a few basic themes, and in so doing they develop a common "grammar" for discussing a variety of issues. They show how a common approach that emphasizes the three-way interaction among increasing returns, transportation costs, and the movement of productive factors can be applied to a wide range of issues in urban, regional, and international economics. This book is the first to provide a sound and unified explanation of the existence of large economic agglomerations at various spatial scales.