Time and Space in Economic Theory

This article advocates the classical geometric and visual approach to spatial economic modelling, as a means for intuitive understanding, and as a complement to the discrete network representation of space. It is also argued that it is time to abandon the rather weak optimality explanations for such issues as the genesis of hexagonal shapes, and replace them by more robust considerations of structural stability. 1 General Equilibrium Theory Current main stream economics is not in favour of dealing with dynamic processes and spatial structures since the victory of general equilibrium theory, General equilibrium has a long history from Léon Walras 1874 [34] over Gustav Cassel 1918 [8], and Abraham Wald 1936 [33], but its dominance dates from 1960 and the work by Kenneth Arrow and Gérard Debreu, [3], [11]. In this paradigm, the general concept of commodity is basic Such an entity is distinguished, not only through a detailed description of its physical characteristics, also its period attribution and its location in space are part of it, so temporal processes and spatial structures become hidden in the index numbers of commodities. ”Rational expectations”(previously denoted "perfect foresight") are part of the theory; and transform temporal processes into special characteristic of an equilibrium point in a huge phase space; or, to put it irreverently, evolution in time into a show of a movie already made in advance. Things are similar in the case of space, but the particularly nasty thing in the case of this way of dealing with time is that the causality principle exits from the theory. Note the contrast to the view of Paul Samuelson 1947,