Paul Samuelson once noted that "Abba Lerner has been a great theoretical economist in a vintage epoch for theorists. This last third of a century he has poured out one brilliant paper after another-in micro theory and macro, in pure thought, and in the realms of policy." Lerner's colleagues at...

The aim of this paper is to provide an outline of the development of the theory of exchange, concentrating on the less well-known development of the formal model which culminated in the contribution of Edgeworth. The importance of exchange, viewed as the central economic problem for the early...

In this paper I look in some detail at one specific aspect of macro distribution theories, namely Keynes's Macro theory of profits.

Arthur Okun - teacher at Yale in the 1950s, member and later Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors in the 1960s, and Fellow of the Brookings Institution throughout the 1970s - was one of the three or four most important macroeconomists of the past twenty years. He was perhaps...

The world of economics is a complicated and messy place. Yet modern economic analysis rests on an attempt to represent the world by means of simple mathematical models. To what extent is this possible? How can such a program cope with the fact that economic outcomes are often driven by factors...

George Stigler, as much if not more than his colleague Milton Friedman, greatly shaped the direction of economics in the post-war era. Part of his ability to do so lay in his critical responses to views that opposed his own fiercely held framework. This paper attempts to supply a consistent...

"It is a measure of Professor Samuelson’s preeminence that the sheer scale of his work should be so much taken for granted," a reviewer for the Economist once observed, marking both Paul Samuelson’s influence and his astonishing prolificacy. Volumes 6 and 7 gather the Nobel Laureate’s...

Recursive methods offer a powerful approach for characterizing and solving complicated problems in dynamic macroeconomics. Recursive Macroeconomic Theory provides both an introduction to recursive methods and advanced material, mixing tools and sample applications. Only experience in solving...

Government regulation is ubiquitous today in rich and middle-income countries--present in areas that range from workplace conditions to food processing to school curricula--although standard economic theories predict that it should be rather uncommon. In this book, Andrei Shleifer argues that...

In this spirited and provocative book, Edward Leamer turns an examination of the Heckscher–Ohlin framework for global competition into an opportunity to consider the craft of economics: what economists do, what they should do, and what they shouldn’t do. Claiming “a lifetime relationship...