Abstract
Standard economic theory assumes a situation of general equilibrium between supply or production and demand or consumption. This equilibrium, or situation of symmetry, is, in fact, a key reference since it provides a monetarized price at the point of exchange where goods and services are offered for consumption. During the Industrial Revolution, a principle of measurement or yardstick was assumed, for practical reasons, to be of crucial importance.
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Notes
see for further reading on the issue of planning strategies; Giarini, Orio (1978) The Diminishing Returns of Technology, Pergamon Press, Oxford.
Kahn, Hermann and Wiener, Anthony (1967) The Year 2000, The Macmillan Co., New York, N.Y.
see in particular Hailey, Arthur (1985) Strong Medicine, Pan Books, London.
O’Connell, Jeffrey (1975) Ending Insult to Injury, University of Illinois Press; Rokes, Willis P. (1971) No Fault Insurance, Insurers Press, Santa Monica, CA; Jackson, Rupert (1982) Professional Negligence, Sweet & Maxwell, London.
on the problem of uncertainty in medical decisions, see Weinstein, W. (1986) “Risky Choices In Medical Decisions”, The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance, Geneva.
Toffler, Alvin (1981) The Third Wave, Bantam Ed., New York, N.Y.. See also on the practical aspects of this issue: Norman, Richard (1984) Service Management, J.Wiley & Sons, Chichester/UK.
Giarini, Orio (1984) Cycles, Values and Employment, Pergamon Press, Oxford.
Landes, David (1969) The Unbounded Prometheus, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
as 8.
as 8.
Marshall, Alfred, Principles of Economics.
Hicks, John R. (1939) Value and Capital, Oxford University Press, Oxford/UK.
Friedman, Milton (1980) Free to choose, Penguin Books, Middlesex/UK.
Clark, Ronald (1980) Einstein, sa vie et son epoque, Stock, Paris.
see among others: Arrow, Kenneth (1978) “New Developments in the Theory of Risk Allocation”, The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance no 8, Geneva, and bibliography therein.
Popper, Karl (1977) Unended Quest, Fontana Collins, Glasgow/UK, p. 86.
quite interesting and accessible to non-specialists are: Kline, M. (1980) Mathematics the Loss of Certainty, Oxford University Press, Oxford; a short article giving a straightforward explanation of the relative truth of mathematics: Little, J. (1980) “The uncertain Craft of Mathematics”, New Scientist, 88, pp. 626-628; and on physics: Bohm, D. (1980) Wholeness and the Implicate Order, Routledge & Keenan, London.
for a clear description and analysis of this point, see Clark, R.W. (1973) Einstein, the Life and Times, Hodder & Stoughton, London.
this is precisely the type of debate that Gianni’s Dialogue on Wealth and Welfare has tried to initiate.
Weisskopf, Walter (1984) Reflections on Uncertainty in Economics, Seventh Annual Lecture of the Geneva Association, The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance, Geneva.
René Passet is one of the pioneers in building bridges for economists between modern developments in scientific thinking and economics; see for instance: Passet, René (1979) L’économique et le vivant, Payot, Paris.
his testing of economic paradigms against the work of Ilya Prigogine is very promising.
excerpts taken from the Honda Lecture 1983 by Professor Ilya Prigogine, Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1977, Professor at the Universities of Brussels and Austin, TX.
see among others: Capra, Frank (in preparation) Keppel: Uncertainty, the ground for life.
published by Hutchinson Group SA Ltd, London. 26. as 23.
on this issue, see the notion of “deducted values” in Gianni, Orio (1980) Dialogue on Wealth and Welfare, p. 121.
see Tevoedjre, Albert (1978) Pauvrete, Richesse des Peuples, Editions Sociales, Paris.
see Weisskopf, Walter (1972) The Psychology of Economics, University of Chicago Press, Ill., pp. 57 ff.
as 29, pp. 11 ff, 33 ff, 166 ff.
see “Assessing Wealth and Welfare”, in Giarini, Orio (1980) Dialogue on Wealth and Welfare, pp. 200 ff.
Marshall, Alfred, Principles of Economics.
there is also of course the opposite form of inefficiency: when specialization leads to myopia on how a specialized part of an activity fits into a greater whole.
Max Weber and many other sociologists have, in their description of the entrepreneur, attached much greater relevance to the notion of risk in the period of the Industrial Revolution than economists themselves. Frank Knight wrote a first book on this subject in the 1920’s.
the notion of complexity has become increasingly popular as a subject for research in many areas. Among others, the University of the United Nations has started a programme in this direction. See: UNU (1985) The Science and Praxis of Complexity, The United Nations University, Tokyo.
in an article published in 1985 in Business Week, economists were referred to as an “endangered species”.
see Henderson, Hazel (1980) The End of Economics-Creating an Alternative Future, Pergee Books, Putman’s Sons, New York, N.Y..
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Giarini, O., Stahel, W.R. (1993). Producing the Wealth of Nations; the Risk Takers and the Supply- Side of the Economy. The Dynamics of Disequilibrium. In: The Limits to Certainty. International Studies in the Service Economy, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-1775-3_4
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