Using neoclassical thought as his entry point, Yahya M. Madra offers a vital prolegomenon to recalibrated critical political economy. Madra’s reinterpretation of the economic field pivots around what he calls theoretical-humanist problematic, suggesting that an ontologically inflected recharacterization is essential any serious development progressive alternatives dominant mainstream forms Afte...

This paper summarizes neoclassical, behavioral, and neuroeconomic models of intertemporal consumption and savings behavior. I summarize the construction and implications of Modigliani & Brumberg’s Life-Cycle Hypothesis [4] and Laibson’s quasi-hyperbolic consumption function [8] as background and motivation for Bisin & Benhabib’s neuroeconomic model of dynamic consumption behavior [3]. In partic...

Walrasian tâtonnement has been a fundamental assumption in economics ever since Walras’ general equilibrium theory was introduced in 1874. Nearly a century after its introduction, Vernon Smith relaxed the Walrasian tâtonnement assumption by showing that neoclassical competitive market theory explains the equilibrating forces in “double-auction” markets. I make a next step in this evolution by e...

This course introduces students to the field of ecological economics and explores how the field's simple premise — to recognize the fundamental dependence of the economic system on the environment — complicates matters for conventional economic theory and practice. While focusing on ecological economics, the intent is to expose students to a variety of thought on the theoretical relationship be...

This paper is a critical review of and a reader’s guide to a collection of papers by Robert E. Lucas, Jr. about fruitful ways of using general equilibrium theories to understand measured economic aggregates. These beautifully written and wisely argued papers integrated macroeconomics, microeconomics, finance, and econometrics in ways that restructured big parts of macroeconomic research. 1 Arro...

In neoclassical theory, product differentiation provides consumers with a variety of different products within a particular industry, rather than a homogeneous product that characterizes purely competitive markets. The welfare-enhancing benefit of product differentiation is the greater variety of products available to consumers, which comes at the cost of a higher average total cost of producti...

James Tobin, while universally acknowledged as one of the leading macroeconomists of the twentieth century, is less well remembered as a growth economist, despite his continuing interest in growth throughout his career. His early work placed him near the origins of modern growth economics. Robert Solow (2004, 657) recalls that Tobin “published ‘A Dynamic Aggregative Model’ at just the time when...