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...

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...

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...

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.

The extensively revised and updated second edition combines carefully chosen primary quotes with wide-ranging discussion and everyday illustrative examples to provide an in-depth introduction to classical and contemporary sociological theory.Combines classical and contemporary theory in a single, integrated textShort biographies and historical timelines of significant events provide context to theorists' ideasInnovatively builds on excerpts from original t...

This open access book examines from a variety of perspectives the disappearance of moral content and ethical judgment from the models employed in the formulation of modern economic theory, and some of the papers contain important proposals about how moral judgment could be reintroduced in economic theory. The chapters collected in this volume result from the favorable reception of the first volume of the Virtues in Economics series and represent further contributions to the themes set out ...

Society and Economy—a work of exceptional ambition by the founder of modern economic sociology—is the first full account of Mark Granovetter’s ideas about the diverse ways in which society and economy are intertwined.The economy is not a sphere separate from other human activities, Granovetter writes. It is deeply embedded in social relations and subject to the same emotions, ideas, and constraints as religion, science, politics, or law. While some actions can be understoo...

The second edition of Regional Economics provides a comprehensive and up-to-date treatment of regional economics. This fully revised edition includes key theoretical developments of the last ten years.Topics included span from the earliest location theories to the most recent regional growth theories. It is also is also enriched by the recent debate on smart specialization strategies recently developed by the EU for the design of new cohesion policies.Key elements ...