From Catastrophe to Chaos

by Rosser, J. Barkley

• ISBN13: 9780792377702
• ISBN10: 0792377702
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-08-01
• Publisher: Kluwer Academic Pub

Summary

From Catastrophe to Chaos: A General Theory of Economic Discontinuities presents and unusual perspective on economics and economic analysis. Current economic theory largely depends upon assuming that the world is fundamentally continuous. However, an increasing amount of economic research has been done using approaches that allow for discontinuities such as catastrophe theory, chaos theory, synergetics, and fractal geometry. The spread of such approaches across a variety of disciplines of thought has constituted a virtual intellectual revolution in recent years. This book reviews the applications of these approaches in various subdisciplines of economics and draws upon past economic thinkers to develop an integrated view of economics as a whole from the perspective of inherent discontinuity.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Discontinuity in Economic Theory and Economic Discontinuities	1	(8)
Some Initial Remarks	1	(1)
Discontinuity in the Large and the Small	2	(2)
On Scale and Perspective in Identifying Discontinuities	4	(5)
The Mathematics of Discontinuity	9	(60)
General Overview	9	(1)
The Founding Fathers	9	(7)
The Bifurcation of Bifurcation Theory	16	(36)
The Special Path to Fractal Geometry	52	(2)
The Complexity of Other Forms of Complexity	54	(15)
Discontinuities in Microeconomics Systems	69	(36)
General Equilibrium Aspects	69	(6)
Discontinuous Competitive Market Dynamics	75	(17)
Discontinuities in Imperfectly Competitive Markets	92	(13)
Speculative Bubbles and Crashes I: Irrational	105	(18)
Introduction	105	(2)
What Is a Speculative Bubble?	107	(1)
A Classical View of Irrational Bubbles	107	(2)
Mechanisms of the Speculative Mania	109	(5)
Mechanisms of the Speculative Panic	114	(4)
Varieties of Irrational Bubbles	118	(5)
Speculative Bubbles and Crashes II: Rational and Semi-Rational	123	(38)
Self-fulfilling Prophecies, Rational Bubbles, and Sunspots	123	(2)
When Are Rational Bubbles Possible?	125	(4)
Price Bubbles in Monetary Economies	129	(6)
Heterogeneous Agents and Semi-rational Bubbles	135	(11)
The Empirical Observability of Bubbles	146	(15)
Catastrophe Theory and Hysteresis in Macroeconomics	161	(14)
Nonlinear Investment and Business Cycles	161	(5)
Hysteresis of Stagflation	166	(9)
Chaos Theory and Complex Macroeconomic Dynamics	175	(32)
Introduction	175	(1)
Sunspots and Regular Cycles in Overlapping Generations Models	176	(4)
Chaotic Cycles in Overlapping Generations Models	180	(4)
Variations on a Theme	184	(11)
Does it Really Exist?	195	(3)
Multiplicity, Indeterminacy, and Worse	198	(9)
Discontinuity and Capital Theory	207	(22)
The Capital Theory Controversies	207	(2)
Technique Clusters, Discontinuous Technology, and Steady-State Comparisons	209	(4)
But Continuity Does not Gurantee ``No Paradox''	213	(1)
On the Other Hand Paradox Can Cause Discontinuity	214	(6)
Schumpeterian Discontinuities and ``Historical Reswitching''	220	(9)
References	229