Classical Econophysics

by Cottrell; Allin F.

• ISBN13: 9780415478489
• ISBN10: 0415478480
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-07-08
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This book sets out to address some basic questions drawing from classical political economy and information theory and using an econophysics methodology: What is information? Why is it valuable? What is the relationship between money and information?

Table of Contents

List of Figures	p. ix
List of Tables	p. xv
List of Digressions	p. xvii
Acknowledgements	p. xix
Introduction	p. 1
Work, information and value	p. 5
Problematizing labour	p. 7
Watt on work	p. 7
Marx: the architect and the bee	p. 12
The demonic challenge	p. 19
Entropy	p. 20
Problematizing information	p. 30
The Shannon-Weaver concept of information	p. 30
Entropy reductions in action programs	p. 38
Alternative views of information	p. 38
Labour productivity	p. 47
Raising production in general	p. 47
Accelerated production	p. 53
Parallelizing production	p. 58
Babbage and the birth of digital technology	p. 74
Copy and calculating	p. 74
Tables	p. 75
Prony, Babbage and the division of mental labour	p. 77
Babbage's machines	p. 81
From machines to the universal machine	p. 85
Processing information	p. 85
Turing machines	p. 89
The universal Turing machine	p. 97
Decidability and the Church-Turing thesis	p. 99
The TM computability of markets	p. 103
RUR or Robots R Us	p. 108
Political economy: value and labour	p. 113
Smith and Watt	p. 113
Labour commanded as a measure of value	p. 117
Labour time and the determination of value	p. 119
Ricardo: clarity achieved	p. 121
Marx's contribution	p. 125
Two challenges to the labour theory of value	p. 130
The probabilistic response	p. 136
Exchange, money and capital	p. 137
The probabilistic approach to economic variables	p. 139
Probabilistic models	p. 139
The statistical mechanics of money	p. 148
Introduction	p. 148
Boltzmann-Gibbs distribution	p. 149
Computer simulations	p. 150
Thermal machine	p. 152
Models with debt	p. 153
Boltzmann equation	p. 155
Non-Boltzmann-Gibbs distributions	p. 156
Nonlinear Boltzmann equation vs. linear master equation	p. 158
Conclusions	p. 159
A probabilistic approach to the law of value	p. 161
The law of value	p. 161
The model	p. 163
Simulation results	p. 168
Analysis	p. 174
Discussion	p. 180
Value in the capitalist economy	p. 184
Farjoun and Machover's approach to price	p. 185
Information content of prices	p. 188
Prices and the rate of profit	p. 190
Empirical evidence for labour theory of value	p. 192
Money, credit and the form of value	p. 203
Money and the form of value	p. 203
Two theories of money	p. 206
Monetary relations and records	p. 210
Money space, an illustration	p. 214
Commodity-money space	p. 220
The logical properties of financial transactions	p. 226
Banking and capital	p. 233
Bank credit	p. 233
The necessity of paper money	p. 244
Banking technology	p. 247
The interest rate	p. 254
Dominance of the financial sector	p. 256
Class distribution of income	p. 261
A probabilistic model of the social relations of capitalism	p. 263
Introduction	p. 263
A dynamic model of the social relations of production	p. 264
Results	p. 271
A note on methodology	p. 287
Essential and inessential properties of capitalism	p. 290
Understanding profit	p. 292
Sraffa: profit and the technology matrix	p. 293
Kalecki: profit and monetary flows	p. 298
Demographics and the long-run rate of profit	p. 300
Information and coordination	p. 319
Hayek, information and knowledge	p. 321
Inadequacy of the price form	p. 323
Information flows under market and plan	p. 332
The argument from dynamics	p. 337
Appendices	p. 341
The law of value: proofs	p. 343
The law of value: experimental details	p. 346
A simple planning program	p. 347
Profits in the SA model	p. 349
References	p. 353
Index	p. 361
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.