Use value

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_value

Use value (German: Gebrauchswert) or value in use is a concept in classical political economy and Marxist economics. It refers to the tangible features of a commodity (a tradeable object) which can satisfy some human requirement, want or need, or which serves a useful purpose. In Karl Marx's critique of political economy, any product has a labor-value and a use-value, and if it is traded as a commodity in markets, it additionally has an exchange value, most often expressed as a money-price.

Marx acknowledges that commodities being traded also have a general utility, implied by the fact that people want them, but he argues that this by itself says nothing about the specific character of the economy in which they are produced and sold.

Origin of the concept

The concepts of value, use value, utility, exchange value and price have a very long history in economic and philosophical thought. From Aristotle to Adam Smith and David Ricardo, their meanings have evolved. Smith recognized that commodities may have an exchange-value but may satisfy no use-value, such as diamonds, while a commodity with a very high use-value may have a very low exchange-value, such as water. Marx comments for example that "in English writers of the 17th century we frequently find worth in the sense of value in use, and value in the sense of exchange-value." With the expansion of market economy, however, the focus of economists has increasingly been on prices and price-relations, the social process of exchange as such being assumed to occur as a naturally given fact.

In The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx emphasizes that the use-value of a labour-product is practical and objectively determined; that is, it inheres in the intrinsic characteristics of a product that enable it to satisfy a human need or want. The use-value of a product therefore exists as a material reality according to social needs regardless of the individual need of any particular person. The use-value of a commodity is specifically a social use-value, meaning that it has a generally accepted use-value for others in society, and not just for the producer.

Marx's definition

Marx first defines use-value precisely in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859) where he explains:

To begin with, a commodity, in the language of the English economists, is 'any thing necessary, useful or pleasant in life,' an object of human wants, a means of existence in the widest sense of the term. Use-value as an aspect of the commodity coincides with the physical palpable existence of the commodity. Wheat, for example, is a distinct use-value differing from the use-values of cotton, glass, paper, etc. A use-value has value only in use, and is realized only in the process of consumption. One and the same use-value can be used in various ways. But the extent of its possible application is limited by its existence as an object with distinct properties. It is, moreover, determined not only qualitatively but also quantitatively. Different use-values have different measures appropriate to their physical characteristics; for example, a bushel of wheat, a quire of paper, a yard of linen. Whatever its social form may be, wealth always consists of use-values, which in the first instance are not affected by this form. From the taste of wheat it is not possible to tell who produced it, a Russian serf, a French peasant or an English capitalist. Although use-values serve social needs and therefore exist within the social framework, they do not express the social relations of production. For instance, let us take as a use-value a commodity such as a diamond. We cannot tell by looking at it that the diamond is a commodity. Where it serves as an aesthetic or mechanical use-value, on the neck of a courtesan or in the hand of a glass-cutter, it is a diamond and not a commodity. To be a use-value is evidently a necessary prerequisite of the commodity, but it is immaterial to the use-value whether it is a commodity. Use-value as such, since it is independent of the determinate economic form, lies outside the sphere of investigation of political economy. It belongs in this sphere only when it is itself a determinate form. Use-value is the immediate physical entity in which a definite economic relationship—exchange-value—is expressed.

The concept is also introduced at the beginning of Das Kapital, where Marx writes, but in the extract below he holds it up as a critique of Hegel's liberal "Philosophy of Right". He remained a sharp critic of what was to the Marxian view a destructive philosophy:

The utility of a thing makes it a use value. But this utility is not a thing of air. Being limited by the physical properties of the commodity, it has no existence apart from that commodity. A commodity, such as iron, corn, or a diamond, is therefore, so far as it is a material thing, a use value, something useful. This property of a commodity is independent of the amount of labour required to appropriate its useful qualities. When treating of use value, we always assume to be dealing with definite quantities, such as dozens of watches, yards of linen, or tons of iron. The use values of commodities furnish the material for a special study, that of the commercial knowledge of commodities. Use values become a reality only by use or consumption: they also constitute the substance of all wealth, whatever may be the social form of that wealth. In the form of society we are about to consider, they are, in addition, the material depositories of exchange value."

This was a direct reference by Marx to Hegel's Elements of the Philosophy of Right §63 as Marx adds:

A thing can be a use value, without having value. This is the case whenever its utility to man is not due to labour. Such are air, virgin soil, natural meadows, &c. A thing can be useful, and the product of human labour, without being a commodity. Whoever directly satisfies his wants with the produce of his own labour, creates, indeed, use values, but not commodities. In order to produce the latter, he must not only produce use values, but use values for others, social use values. (And not only for others, without more. The mediaeval peasant produced quit-rent-corn for his feudal lord and tithe-corn for his parson. But neither the quit-rent-corn nor the tithe-corn became commodities by reason of the fact that they had been produced for others. To become a commodity a product must be transferred to another, whom it will serve as a use value, by means of an exchange.) Lastly nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value.

Marx acknowledges that a nominal price or value can be imputed to goods or assets which are not reproducible goods and not produced by human labour, as correctly noted later by Engels that a product is not necessarily a commodity. However Marx generally holds that only human labour expended can create value compared with Nature, through instrumentation known as modus operandi, or the method of working.

Transformation into a commodity

"As exchange-values, all commodities are merely definite quantities of congealed labour-time", wrote Karl Marx. The discrepancy of the true purpose of value came to be one of the biggest sources of conflict between capital and labour. The transformation of a use-value into a social use-value and into a commodity (the process of commodification) is not automatic or spontaneous, but has technical, social and political preconditions. For example, it must be possible to trade it, and to transfer ownership or access rights to it from one person or organization to another in a secure way. There must also be a real market demand for it. And all that may depend greatly on the nature of the use-value itself, as well as the ability to package, store, preserve and transport it. In the case of information or communication as use-values, transforming them into commodities may be a complex and problem-fraught process.

Thus, the objective characteristics of use-values are very important for understanding (1) the development and expansion of market trade, and (2) necessary technical relationships between different economic activities (e.g. supply chains). To produce a car, for example, you objectively require steel, and this steel is required, regardless of what its price might be. Necessary relationships therefore exist between different use-values, because they are technically, materially and practically related. Some authors therefore write about an "industrial complex" or "technological complex", indicating thereby how different technological products are linked in a system. A good example would be all the different products involved in the production and use of motor cars.

The category of use-value is also important in distinguishing different economic sectors according to their specific type of output. Following Quesnay's analysis of economic reproduction, Marx distinguished between the economic sector producing means of production and the sectors producing consumer goods and luxuries. In modern national accounts more subtle distinctions are made, for example between primary, secondary and tertiary production, semi-durable and durable goods, and so on.

Role in political economy

In his textbook The Theory of Capitalist Development (1942), American Marxist Paul Sweezy claimed:

Use-value is an expression of a certain relation between the consumer and the object consumed. Political economy, on the other hand, is a social science of the relations between people. It follows that 'use-value as such' lies outside the sphere of investigation of political economy.

Marx explicitly rejected Sweezy and Uno's interpretation of use-value (see the previously cited quotation from 1859, in which use-value is distinguished from the general concept of utility). In a draft included in the Grundrisse manuscripts, which inspired the starting point of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and Das Kapital, Marx states:

The commodity itself appears as unity of two aspects. It is use value, i.e. object of the satisfaction of any system whatever of human needs. This is its material side, which the most disparate epochs of production may have in common, and whose examination therefore lies beyond political economy. Use value falls within the realm of political economy as soon as it becomes modified by the modern relations of production, or as it, in turn, intervenes to modify them. What it is customary to say about it in general terms, for the sake of good form, is confined to commonplaces which had a historic value in the first beginnings of the science, when the social forms of bourgeois production had still laboriously to be peeled out of the material, and, at great effort, to be established as independent objects of study. In fact, however, the use value of the commodity is a given presupposition—the material basis in which a specific economic relation presents itself. It is only this specific relation which stamps the use value as a commodity.

— Karl Marx, Fragment on Value, in: Grundrisse, Notebook 7 (1858), emphasis added

In his text The Making of Marx's 'Capital', Roman Rosdolsky explains the role of use value in Marx's economics. Marx himself, in the introduction to his Grundrisse manuscript, had defined the economic sphere as the totality of production, circulation, distribution and consumption. However, as Marx did not live to finish Das Kapital, he did not theorise how commercial relations would reshape the sphere of personal consumption in accordance with the requirements of capital accumulation.

Minor issues remained from these neoclassical theories, such as the question of the proper empirical definition of capital and labour in the laws of factor substitution. Other empirical issues include the so-called Solow Residual in which the heterogenous nature of labour is thoroughly explored for its qualitative elements beyond differentiation, and the concept of total factor productivity, prompting some to consider such things as technology, human capital, and stock of knowledge. Later scholars, such as Walter Benjamin, Fernand Braudel, Ben Fine, Manuel Castells and Michel Aglietta attempted to fill the gap in Marx's unfinished work. In modern times the theory has been extended to conclude that conversion of energy-driven work does not rely on labour-intensive inputs; thus use can be unsupervised work that develops a notion of human capital.

Equation: A = P + hL (A, the Concept of Substitutive Work = P, the loss of Primary Productive Energy (which is P/Ep, the coefficient of efficiency) + h, the units of energy (which is the energy consumed by workers during work done) * L, Labour time per hour)

Utility

Marx's concept of use-value seems akin to, but in reality differs from the neoclassical concept of utility:

• Marx usually assumes in his analysis that products sold in the market have a use-value to the buyer, without attempting to quantify that use-value other than in product units of price, and commodity value. (this caused some of his readers to think wrongly that use-value played no role in his theory). "The utility makes it a use value," The neoclassicals, on the other hand, typically see prices as the quantitative expression of the general utility of products for buyers and sellers, instead of expressing their exchange-value. For "Price is the money-name of the labour realised in a commodity".
• In neoclassical economics, this utility is ultimately subjectively determined by the buyer of a good, and not objectively by the intrinsic characteristics of the good. Thus, neoclassical economists often talk about the marginal utility of a product, i.e., how its utility fluctuates according to consumption patterns. This kind of utility is a "general utility" which exists independently from particular uses that can be made of a product, the assumption being that if somebody wants, demands, desires or needs a good, then it has this general utility. According to his supporters Marx would have allegedly rejected the concept of marginal utility precisely because it accentuated profit on capital returns over the usefulness or utility of labour. Thus the wider application of general utility lay in variable rates of productivity, since higher labour inputs could raise or lower the price of commodity. This was the true concept of Use as a Value system: the higher the rate of 'productiveness' the more labour 'crystallised' in the article.
• Marx rejects any economic doctrine of consumer sovereignty, stating among other things in his first chapter to Das Kapital that "In bourgeois societies the economic fictio juris prevails, that every one, as a buyer, possesses an encyclopaedic knowledge of commodities".

In summary, different concepts of use value lead to different interpretations and explanations of trade, commerce and capitalism. Marx's main argument is that if we focus only on the general utility of a commodity, we abstract from and ignore precisely the specific social relations of production which created it.

"Indifference" of capitalists

Some academics such as Professor Robert Albritton, a Canadian political scientist, have claimed that according to Marx, capitalists are basically "indifferent" to the use-value of the goods and services in which they trade, since what matters to capitalists is just the money they make; whatever the buyer does with the goods and services produced is, so it seems, of no real concern.

But this is arguably a misunderstanding of business activity and the bourgeoisie as a class. Marx thought that capitalists can never be totally "indifferent" to use-values, because inputs of sufficient quality (labour, materials, equipment) must be bought and managed to produce outputs that:

• will sell at an adequate profit;
• are legally permitted by the state to be sold;
• do not destroy the reputation of the supplier (with its obvious effect on sales).

For this purpose, the inputs in production must moreover be used in an economical way, and care must be taken not to waste resources to the extent that this would mean additional costs for an enterprise, or reduce productivity. The Theory of Use Values relates directly to human labour and the power of machines to destroy value, "Living labour must seize on these things, awaken them from the dead, change them from merely possible into real and effective use values".

It is just that from the point of view of the financier or investor, the main concern is not what exactly is being produced as such or how useful that is for society, but whether the investment can make a profit for him. If the products of the enterprise being invested in sell and make a profit, then that is regarded as sufficient indication of usefulness. Even so, the investor is obviously interested in "the state of the market" for the enterprise's products—if certain products are being used less or used more, this affects sales and profits. So to evaluate "the state of the market", the investor needs knowledge about the place of a product in the value chain and how it is being used.

Often, Marx assumed in Das Kapital for argument's sake that supply and demand will balance, and that products do sell. Even so, Marx carefully defines the production process both as a labour process creating use-values, and a valorisation process creating new value. He asserts only that "capital in general" as an abstract social power, or as a property claim to surplus value, is indifferent to particular use-values—what matters in this financial relation is only whether more value can be appropriated through the exchanges that occur. Most share-holders are not interested in whether a company actually satisfies customers, they want an adequate profit on their investment (but a countertrend is so-called "socially responsible investing").

In modern times, business leaders are often very concerned with total quality management in production, which has become the object of scientific studies, as well as a new source of industrial conflict, since attempts are made to integrate everything a worker is and does (both their creative potential and how they relate to others) in the battle for improved quality. In that case, it could be argued not just labour power but the whole person is a use-value (see further Richard Sennett's books such as The Culture of the New Capitalism, Yale (2006). Some regard this practice as a kind of "wage-slavery".

From beginning to end, and from production to consumption, use-value and exchange-value form a dialectical unity. If this is not fully clear from Marx's writings, that is perhaps mainly because he never theorised the sphere of final consumption in any detail, nor the way in which commerce reshapes the way that final consumption takes place.

Economic equilibrium

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Economic equilibrium
A solution concept in game theory
Relationship
Subset of	Equilibrium, Free market
Superset of	Competitive equilibrium, Nash equilibrium, Intertemporal equilibrium, Recursive competitive equilibrium
Significance
Used for	mostly Perfect competition, but also some Imperfect competition

In economics, economic equilibrium is a situation in which economic forces such as supply and demand are balanced and in the absence of external influences the (equilibrium) values of economic variables will not change. For example, in the standard text perfect competition, equilibrium occurs at the point at which quantity demanded and quantity supplied are equal.

Market equilibrium in this case is a condition where a market price is established through competition such that the amount of goods or services sought by buyers is equal to the amount of goods or services produced by sellers. This price is often called the competitive price or market clearing price and will tend not to change unless demand or supply changes, and quantity is called the "competitive quantity" or market clearing quantity. But the concept of equilibrium in economics also applies to imperfectly competitive markets, where it takes the form of a Nash equilibrium.

Understanding economic equilibrium

An economic equilibrium is a situation when the economic agent cannot change the situation by adopting any strategy. The concept has been borrowed from the physical sciences. Take a system where physical forces are balanced for instance.This economically interpreted means no further change ensues.

Properties of equilibrium

Three basic properties of equilibrium in general have been proposed by Huw Dixon. These are:

• Equilibrium property P1: The behavior of agents is consistent.

• Equilibrium property P2: No agent has an incentive to change its behavior.

• Equilibrium property P3: Equilibrium is the outcome of some dynamic process (stability).

Example: competitive equilibrium

Competitive Equilibrium: Price equates supply and demand.

• P – price
• Q – quantity demanded and supplied
• S – supply curve
• D – demand curve
• P₀ – equilibrium price
• A – excess demand – when P<P₀
• B – excess supply – when P>P₀

In a competitive equilibrium, supply equals demand. Property P1 is satisfied, because at the equilibrium price the amount supplied is equal to the amount demanded. Property P2 is also satisfied. Demand is chosen to maximize utility given the market price: no one on the demand side has any incentive to demand more or less at the prevailing price. Likewise supply is determined by firms maximizing their profits at the market price: no firm will want to supply any more or less at the equilibrium price. Hence, agents on neither the demand side nor the supply side will have any incentive to alter their actions.

To see whether Property P3 is satisfied, consider what happens when the price is above the equilibrium. In this case there is an excess supply, with the quantity supplied exceeding that demanded. This will tend to put downward pressure on the price to make it return to equilibrium. Likewise where the price is below the equilibrium point there is a shortage in supply leading to an increase in prices back to equilibrium. Not all equilibria are "stable" in the sense of equilibrium property P3. It is possible to have competitive equilibria that are unstable. However, if an equilibrium is unstable, it raises the question of reaching it. Even if it satisfies properties P1 and P2, the absence of P3 means that the market can only be in the unstable equilibrium if it starts off there.

In most simple microeconomic stories of supply and demand a static equilibrium is observed in a market; however, economic equilibrium can be also dynamic. Equilibrium may also be economy-wide or general, as opposed to the partial equilibrium of a single market. Equilibrium can change if there is a change in demand or supply conditions. For example, an increase in supply will disrupt the equilibrium, leading to lower prices. Eventually, a new equilibrium will be attained in most markets. Then, there will be no change in price or the amount of output bought and sold — until there is an exogenous shift in supply or demand (such as changes in technology or tastes). That is, there are no endogenous forces leading to the price or the quantity.

Example: monopolist equilibrium

In a monopoly, marginal revenue (MR) equals marginal cost (MC). The equilibrium quantity is obtained from where MR and MC intersect and the equilibrium price can be found on the demand curve where MR = MC. Property P1 is not satisfied because the amount demand and the amount supplied at the equilibrium price are not equal. Property P2 is not satisfied. Because the monopolist's profit-maximizing quantity is different from the socially-maximizing quantity, consumer's have an incentive to demand more at the equilibrium price. However, at the market price, monopolists maximize their profits so they have no incentive to change their price. Therefore, agents on the demand side have an incentive to alter their actions while the agents on the supply side do not have any incentive to alter their actions.

In order to determine if Property P3 is satisfied, the same situations used to determine P3 in a competitive equilibrium can be used. When there is an excess in supply, monopolists will realize that the equilibrium is not at the profit-maximizing quantity and will put upward pressure on the price to make it return to equilibrium. This is the same case when the price is above the equilibrium and the shortage in supply leads the monopolist to decrease the supply to return to the profit-maximizing quantity. Therefore the equilibrium is the result of stability.

Example: Nash equilibrium

Further information: Nash equilibrium and Cournot model

Equilibrium quantities as a solution to two reaction functions in Cournot duopoly. Firm 1's reaction function q1=R1(q2) gives its optimal output q1 to a given output q2 of firm 2. Likewise, firm 2's reaction function q2=R2(q1). The Cournot-Nash equilibrium occurs where the two reaction functions intersect and both firms are choosing the optimal output given the output of the other firm.

The Nash equilibrium is widely used in economics as the main alternative to competitive equilibrium. It is used whenever there is a strategic element to the behavior of agents and the "price taking" assumption of competitive equilibrium is inappropriate. The first use of the Nash equilibrium was in the Cournot duopoly as developed by Antoine Augustin Cournot in his 1838 book. Both firms produce a homogenous product: given the total amount supplied by the two firms, the (single) industry price is determined using the demand curve. This determines the revenues of each firm (the industry price times the quantity supplied by the firm). The profit of each firm is then this revenue minus the cost of producing the output. Clearly, there is a strategic interdependence between the two firms. If one firm varies its output, this will in turn affect the market price and so the revenue and profits of the other firm. We can define the payoff function which gives the profit of each firm as a function of the two outputs chosen by the firms. Cournot assumed that each firm chooses its own output to maximize its profits given the output of the other firm. The Nash equilibrium occurs when both firms are producing the outputs which maximize their own profit given the output of the other firm.

In terms of the equilibrium properties, we can see that P2 is satisfied: in a Nash equilibrium, neither firm has an incentive to deviate from the Nash equilibrium given the output of the other firm. P1 is satisfied since the payoff function ensures that the market price is consistent with the outputs supplied and that each firms profits equal revenue minus cost at this output.

Is the equilibrium stable as required by P3? Cournot himself argued that it was stable using the stability concept implied by best response dynamics. The reaction function for each firm gives the output which maximizes profits (best response) in terms of output for a firm in terms of a given output of the other firm. In the standard Cournot model this is downward sloping: if the other firm produces a higher output, the best response involves producing less. Best response dynamics involves firms starting from some arbitrary position and then adjusting output to their best-response to the previous output of the other firm. So long as the reaction functions have a slope of less than -1, this will converge to the Nash equilibrium. However, this stability story is open to much criticism. As Dixon argues: "The crucial weakness is that, at each step, the firms behave myopically: they choose their output to maximize their current profits given the output of the other firm, but ignore the fact that the process specifies that the other firm will adjust its output...".^[4] There are other concepts of stability that have been put forward for the Nash equilibrium, evolutionary stability for example.

Market clearing prices

Most economists, for example Paul Samuelson, caution against attaching a normative meaning (value judgement) to the equilibrium price. For example, food markets may be in equilibrium at the same time that people are starving (because they cannot afford to pay the high equilibrium price).

Indeed, this occurred during the Great Famine in Ireland in 1845–52, where food was exported though people were starving, due to the greater profits in selling to the English – the equilibrium price of the Irish-British market for potatoes was above the price that Irish farmers could afford, and thus (among other reasons) they starved.

Interpretations

In most interpretations, classical economists such as Adam Smith maintained that the free market would tend towards economic equilibrium through the price mechanism. That is, any excess supply (market surplus or glut) would lead to price cuts, which decrease the quantity supplied (by reducing the incentive to produce and sell the product) and increase the quantity demanded (by offering consumers bargains), automatically abolishing the glut. Similarly, in an unfettered market, any excess demand (or shortage) would lead to price increases, reducing the quantity demanded (as customers are priced out of the market) and increasing in the quantity supplied (as the incentive to produce and sell a product rises). As before, the disequilibrium (here, the shortage) disappears. This automatic abolition of non-market-clearing situations distinguishes markets from central planning schemes, which often have a difficult time getting prices right and suffer from persistent shortages of goods and services.

This view came under attack from at least two viewpoints. Modern mainstream economics points to cases where equilibrium does not correspond to market clearing (but instead to unemployment), as with the efficiency wage hypothesis in labor economics. In some ways parallel is the phenomenon of credit rationing, in which banks hold interest rates low to create an excess demand for loans, so they can pick and choose whom to lend to. Further, economic equilibrium can correspond with monopoly, where the monopolistic firm maintains an artificial shortage to prop up prices and to maximize profits. Finally, Keynesian macroeconomics points to underemployment equilibrium, where a surplus of labor (i.e., cyclical unemployment) co-exists for a long time with a shortage of aggregate demand.

Solving for the competitive equilibrium price

To find the equilibrium price, one must either plot the supply and demand curves, or solve for the expressions for supply and demand being equal.

An example may be:

${\displaystyle \begin{array}{rl}{Q}_s& =125+1.5\cdot P\\ Q_d& =189-2.25\cdot P\\ \\ Q_s& =Q_d\\ \\ 125+1.5\cdot P& =189-2.25\cdot P\\ (1.5+2.25)\cdot P& =(189-125)\\ P& =\frac{189-125}{1.5+2.25}\\ P& =\frac{64}{3.75}\\ P& =17.067\end{array}}$

In the diagram, depicting simple set of supply and demand curves, the quantity demanded and supplied at price P are equal.

At any price above P supply exceeds demand, while at a price below P the quantity demanded exceeds that supplied. In other words, prices where demand and supply are out of balance are termed points of disequilibrium, creating shortages and oversupply. Changes in the conditions of demand or supply will shift the demand or supply curves. This will cause changes in the equilibrium price and quantity in the market.

Consider the following demand and supply schedule:

Price ($)	Demand	Supply
8.00	6,000	18,000
7.00	8,000	16,000
6.00	10,000	14,000
5.00	12,000	12,000
4.00	14,000	10,000
3.00	16,000	8,000
2.00	18,000	6,000
1.00	20,000	4,000

• The equilibrium price in the market is $5.00 where demand and supply are equal at 12,000 units
• If the current market price was $3.00 – there would be excess demand for 8,000 units, creating a shortage.
• If the current market price was $8.00 – there would be excess supply of 12,000 units.

When there is a shortage in the market we see that, to correct this disequilibrium, the price of the good will be increased back to a price of $5.00, thus lessening the quantity demanded and increasing the quantity supplied thus that the market is in balance.

When there is an oversupply of a good, such as when price is above $6.00, then we see that producers will decrease the price to increase the quantity demanded for the good, thus eliminating the excess and taking the market back to equilibrium.

Influences changing price

A change in equilibrium price may occur through a change in either the supply or demand schedules. For instance, starting from the above supply-demand configuration, an increased level of disposable income may produce a new demand schedule, such as the following:

Price ($)	Demand	Supply
8.00	10,000	18,000
7.00	12,000	16,000
6.00	14,000	14,000
5.00	16,000	12,000
4.00	18,000	10,000
3.00	20,000	8,000
2.00	22,000	6,000
1.00	24,000	4,000

Here we see that an increase in disposable income would increase the quantity demanded of the good by 2,000 units at each price. This increase in demand would have the effect of shifting the demand curve rightward. The result is a change in the price at which quantity supplied equals quantity demanded. In this case we see that the two now equal each other at an increased price of $6.00. Note that a decrease in disposable income would have the exact opposite effect on the market equilibrium.

We will also see similar behaviour in price when there is a change in the supply schedule, occurring through technological changes, or through changes in business costs. An increase in technological usage or know-how or a decrease in costs would have the effect of increasing the quantity supplied at each price, thus reducing the equilibrium price. On the other hand, a decrease in technology or increase in business costs will decrease the quantity supplied at each price, thus increasing equilibrium price.

The process of comparing two static equilibria to each other, as in the above example, is known as comparative statics. For example, since a rise in consumers' income leads to a higher price (and a decline in consumers' income leads to a fall in the price — in each case the two things change in the same direction), we say that the comparative static effect of consumer income on the price is positive. This is another way of saying that the total derivative of price with respect to consumer income is greater than zero.

Dynamic equilibrium

Whereas in a static equilibrium all quantities have unchanging values, in a dynamic equilibrium various quantities may all be growing at the same rate, leaving their ratios unchanging. For example, in the neoclassical growth model, the working population is growing at a rate which is exogenous (determined outside the model, by non-economic forces). In dynamic equilibrium, output and the physical capital stock also grow at that same rate, with output per worker and the capital stock per worker unchanging. Similarly, in models of inflation a dynamic equilibrium would involve the price level, the nominal money supply, nominal wage rates, and all other nominal values growing at a single common rate, while all real values are unchanging, as is the inflation rate.^[8]

The process of comparing two dynamic equilibria to each other is known as comparative dynamics. For example, in the neoclassical growth model, starting from one dynamic equilibrium based in part on one particular saving rate, a permanent increase in the saving rate leads to a new dynamic equilibrium in which there are permanently higher capital per worker and productivity per worker, but an unchanged growth rate of output; so it is said that in this model the comparative dynamic effect of the saving rate on capital per worker is positive but the comparative dynamic effect of the saving rate on the output growth rate is zero.

Disequilibrium

Main article: Disequilibrium macroeconomics § Specific economic sectors

Disequilibrium characterizes a market that is not in equilibrium.^[9] Disequilibrium can occur extremely briefly or over an extended period of time. Typically in financial markets it either never occurs or only momentarily occurs, because trading takes place continuously and the prices of financial assets can adjust instantaneously with each trade to equilibrate supply and demand. At the other extreme, many economists view labor markets as being in a state of disequilibrium—specifically one of excess supply—over extended periods of time. Goods markets are somewhere in between: prices of some goods, while sluggish in adjusting due to menu costs, long-term contracts, and other impediments, do not stay at disequilibrium levels indefinitely.

 

Mainstream economics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mainstream economics is the body of knowledge, theories, and models of economics, as taught by universities worldwide, that are generally accepted by economists as a basis for discussion. Also known as orthodox economics, it can be contrasted to heterodox economics, which encompasses various schools or approaches that are only accepted by a minority of economists.

The economics profession has traditionally been associated with neoclassical economics. This association has however been challenged by prominent historians of economic thought like David Collander. They argue the current economic mainstream theories, such as game theory, behavioral economics, industrial organization, information economics, and the like, share very little common ground with the initial axioms of neoclassical economics.

History

Economics has always featured multiple schools of economic thought, with different schools having different prominence across countries and over time. The current use of the term "mainstream economics" is specific to the post–World War II era, particularly in the English-speaking world, and to a lesser extent globally.

Prior to the development and prevalence of classical economics, the dominant school in Europe was mercantilism, which was rather a loose set of related ideas than an institutionalized school. With the development of modern economics, conventionally given as the late 18th-century The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, British economics developed and became dominated by what is now called the classical school. From The Wealth of Nations until the Great Depression, the dominant school within the English-speaking world was classical economics, and its successor, neoclassical economics. In continental Europe, the earlier work of the physiocrats in France formed a distinct tradition, as did the later work of the historical school of economics in Germany, and throughout the 19th century there were debates in British economics, notably the opposition underconsumptionist school.

During the Great Depression and the following Second World War, the school of Keynesian economics gained attention, which built on the work of the underconsumptionist school, and gained prominence as part of the neoclassical synthesis, which was the post–World War II merger of Keynesian macroeconomics and neoclassical microeconomics that prevailed from the 1950s until the 1970s.

In the 1970s, the consensus in macroeconomics collapsed as a result of the failure of the neoclassical synthesis to explain the phenomenon of stagflation: subsequent to this, two schools of thought in the field emerged: New Keynesianism and New classical macroeconomics. Both sought to rebuild macroeconomics using microfoundations- to explain macroeconomic phenomenon using microeconomics.

Over the course of the 1980s and the 1990s, macroeconomists coalesced around a paradigm known as the new neoclassical synthesis, which combines elements of both New Keynesian and New classical macroeconomics, and forms the basis for the current consensus, which covers previously disputed areas of macroeconomics. The consensus built around this synthesis is characterised by an unprecedented agreement on methodological questions (such as the need to validate models econometrically); such agreement had, until the new synthesis, historically eluded macroeconomics, even during the neoclassical synthesis.

The financial crisis of 2007–2010 and the ensuing global economic crisis exposed modelling failures in the field of short-term macroeconomics.

Term

The term "mainstream economics" came into use in the late 20th century. It appeared in 2001 edition of the seminal textbook Economics by Samuelson and Nordhaus on the inside back cover in the "Family Tree of Economics," which depicts arrows into "Modern Mainstream Economics" from J.M. Keynes (1936) and neoclassical economics (1860–1910). The term "neoclassical synthesis" itself also first appears in the 1955 edition of Samuelson's textbook.

Scope

Mainstream economics can be defined, as distinct from other schools of economics, by various criteria, notably by its assumptions, its methods, and its topics. It is however also useful to challenge this distinction in light of the mutation of mainstream economics.

Assumptions

While being long rejected by many heterodox schools, several assumptions used to underpin many mainstream economic models. These include the neoclassical assumptions of rational choice theory, a representative agent, and, often, rational expectations. However, much of modern economic mainstream modeling consists of exploring the effects that complicating factors have on models, such as imperfect and asymmetric information, bounded rationality, incomplete markets, imperfect competition, heterogenous agents and transaction costs.

Originally, the starting point of orthodox economic analysis was the individual. Individuals and firms were generally defined as units with a common goal: maximisation through rational behaviour. The only differences consisted of:

• the specific objective of the maximisation (individuals tend to maximise utility and firms profit);
• and the constraints faced in the process of maximisation (individuals might be constrained by limited income or commodity prices and firms might be constrained by technology or availability of inputs).

From this (descriptive) theoretical framework, neoclassical economists like Alfred Marshall often derived - although not systematically - the political prescription that political action should not be used to solve the problems of the economic system. Instead, the solution ought to derive from an intervention on the above-mentioned maximisation objectives and constraints. It is in this context that economic capitalism finds its justification. Yet, mainstream economics now includes descriptive theories of market and government failure and private and public goods. These developments suggest a range of views on the desirability or otherwise of government intervention, from a more normative perspective.

Methods

Additionally, some economic fields include elements of both mainstream economics and heterodox economics: for example, Austrian economics, institutional economics, neuroeconomics and non-linear complexity theory. They may use neoclassical economics as a point of departure. At least one institutionalist has argued that "neoclassical economics no longer dominates a mainstream economics."

Topics

Economics has been initially shaped as a discipline concerned with a range of issues revolving around money and wealth. However, in the 1930s, mainstream economics began to mutate into a science of human decision. In 1931, Lionel Robbins famously wrote "Economics is the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses". This drew a line of demarcation between mainstream economics and other disciplines and schools studying the economy.

The mainstream approach of economics as a science of decision-making contributed to enlarge the scope of the discipline. Economists like Gary Becker began to study seemingly distant fields as crime, the family, law, politics, and religion. This expansion is sometimes referred to as economic imperialism.

Neoclassical economics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Neoclassical economics is an approach to economics in which the production, consumption, and valuation (pricing) of goods and services are observed as driven by the supply and demand model. According to this line of thought, the value of a good or service is determined through a hypothetical maximization of utility by income-constrained individuals and of profits by firms facing production costs and employing available information and factors of production. This approach has often been justified by appealing to rational choice theory, a theory that has come under considerable question in recent years.

Neoclassical economics historically dominated macroeconomics and, together with Keynesian economics, formed the neoclassical synthesis which dominated mainstream economics as "neo-Keynesian economics" from the 1950s to the 1970s. It competed with new Keynesian economics as new classical macroeconomics in explaining macroeconomic phenomena from the 1970s until the 1990s, when it was identified as having become a part of the new neoclassical synthesis along with new Keynesianism. There have been many critiques of neoclassical economics, some of which have been incorporated into newer versions of neoclassical theory, whilst some remain distinct fields.

Classification

The term was originally introduced by Thorstein Veblen in his 1900 article "Preconceptions of Economic Science", in which he related marginalists in the tradition of Alfred Marshall et al. to those in the Austrian School.

No attempt will here be made even to pass a verdict on the relative claims of the recognized two or three main "schools" of theory, beyond the somewhat obvious finding that, for the purpose in hand, the so-called Austrian school is scarcely distinguishable from the neo-classical, unless it be in the different distribution of emphasis. The divergence between the modernized classical views, on the one hand, and the historical and Marxist schools, on the other hand, is wider, so much so, indeed, as to bar out a consideration of the postulates of the latter under the same head of inquiry with the former.

It was later used by John Hicks, George Stigler, and others to include the work of Carl Menger, William Stanley Jevons, Léon Walras, John Bates Clark, and many others. Today it is usually used to refer to mainstream economics, although it has also been used as an umbrella term encompassing a number of other schools of thought, notably excluding institutional economics, various historical schools of economics, and Marxian economics, in addition to various other heterodox approaches to economics.

Neoclassical economics is characterized by several assumptions common to many schools of economic thought. There is not a complete agreement on what is meant by neoclassical economics, and the result is a wide range of neoclassical approaches to various problem areas and domains—ranging from neoclassical theories of labor to neoclassical theories of demographic changes.

Theory

Assumptions and objectives

It was expressed by E. Roy Weintraub that neoclassical economics rests on three assumptions, although certain branches of neoclassical theory may have different approaches:

• People have rational preferences between outcomes that can be identified and associated with values.
• Individuals maximize utility and firms maximize profits.
• People act independently on the basis of full and relevant information.

From these three assumptions, neoclassical economists have built a structure to understand the allocation of scarce resources among alternative ends—in fact, understanding such allocation is often considered the definition of economics to neoclassical theorists. Here's how William Stanley Jevons presented "the problem of Economics".

Given, a certain population, with various needs and powers of production, in possession of certain lands and other sources of material: required, the mode of employing their labor which will maximize the utility of their produce.

From the basic assumptions of neoclassical economics comes a wide range of theories about various areas of economic activity. For example, profit maximization lies behind the neoclassical theory of the firm, while the derivation of demand curves leads to an understanding of consumer goods, and the supply curve allows an analysis of the factors of production. Utility maximization is the source for the neoclassical theory of consumption, the derivation of demand curves for consumer goods, and the derivation of labor supply curves and reservation demand.

Supply and demand model

Market analysis is typically the neoclassical answer to price questions, such as why does an apple cost less than an automobile, why does the performance of work command a wage, or how to account for interest as a reward for saving. An important device of neoclassical market analysis is the graph presenting supply and demand curves. The curves are reflecting the behavior of individual buyers and individual sellers. Buyers and sellers interact with each other in and through these markets, and their interactions determine the market prices of anything they buy and sell. In the following graph, the specific price of the commodity being bought/sold is represented by P*.

In reaching agreed outcomes of their interactions, the market behaviors of buyers and sellers are driven by their preferences (= wants, utilities, tastes, choices) and productive abilities (= technologies, resources). This creates a complex relationship between buyers and sellers. Thus, the geometrical analytics of supply and demand is only a simplified way how to describe and explore their interaction. Market supply and demand are aggregated across firms and individuals. Their interactions determine equilibrium output and price. The market supply and demand for each factor of production is derived analogously to those for market final output to determine equilibrium income and the income distribution. Factor demand incorporates the marginal-productivity relationship of that factor in the output market.

Neoclassical economics emphasizes equilibria, which are the solutions of agent maximization problems. Regularities in economies are explained by methodological individualism, the position that economic phenomena can be explained by aggregating over the behavior of agents. The emphasis is on microeconomics. Institutions, which might be considered as prior to and conditioning individual behavior, are de-emphasized. Economic subjectivism accompanies these emphases. See also general equilibrium.

Utility theory of value

Neoclassical economics uses the utility theory of value, which states that the value of a good is determined by the marginal utility experienced by the user. This is one of the main distinguishing factors between neoclassical economics and other earlier economic theories, such as Classical and Marxian, which use the labor theory of value that value is determined by the labor required for production.

The partial definition of the neoclassical theory of value states that the value of an object of market exchange is determined by human interaction between the preferences and productive abilities of individuals. This is one of the most important neoclassical hypotheses. However, the neoclassical theory also asks what exactly is causing the supply and demand behaviors of buyers and sellers, and how exactly the preferences and productive abilities of people determine the market prices. Therefore, the neoclassical theory of value is a theory of these forces: the preferences and productive abilities of humans. They are the final causal determinants of the behavior of supply and demand and therefore of value. According to neoclassical economics, individual preferences and productive abilities are the essential forces that generate all other economic events (demands, supplies, and prices).

Cambridge quantity theory of money

The Cambridge version of the quantity theory of money was developed mainly by Alfred Marshall, Arthur Cecil Pigou, Ralph George Hawtrey and Dennis Holme Robertson, and is understood as the income version of the money theory. The basis of the Cambridge quantity theory of money is the Cambridge equation:

${\displaystyle M_d=kPY,}$

where ${\displaystyle M_d}$ is the demand for money, ${\displaystyle k}$ is the Cambridge (Marshall) coefficient expressing the part of real income in the form of cash, ${\displaystyle P}$ is the price level and ${\displaystyle Y}$ is the real income. The left side of the Cambridge equation is expressing the money supply, i.e. the amount of money that people have at their disposal, whereas the right side is expressing the sum of cash people actually want to have, i.e. it is expressing the money demand. Thus, the Cambridge equation is focusing on exploring the conditions of equilibrium in the money market.

Market failure and externalities

Despite favoring markets to organize economic activity, neoclassical theory acknowledges that markets do not always produce the socially desirable outcome due to the presence of externalities. Externalities are considered a form of market failure. Neoclassical economists vary in terms of the significance they ascribe to externalities in market outcomes.

Pareto criterion

In a market with a very large number of participants and under appropriate conditions, for each good, there will be a unique price that allows all welfare–improving transactions to take place. This price is determined by the actions of the individuals pursuing their preferences. If these prices are flexible, meaning that all parties are able to pursue transactions at any rates they find mutually beneficial, they will, under appropriate assumptions, tend to settle at price levels that allow for all welfare–improving transactions. Under these assumptions, free-market processes yield an optimum of social welfare. This type of group welfare is called the Pareto optimum (criterion) after its discoverer Vilfredo Pareto. Wolff and Resnick (2012) describe the Pareto optimality in another way. According to them, the term "Pareto optimal point" signifies the equality of consumption and production, which indicates that the demand (as a ratio of marginal utilities) and supply (as a ratio of marginal costs) sides of an economy are in balance with each other. The Pareto optimum point also signifies that society has fully realized its potential output.

Normative judgments in neoclassical economics are shaped by the Pareto criterion. As a result, many neoclassical economists favor a relatively laissez-faire approach to government intervention in markets, since it is very difficult to make a change where no one will be worse off. However, many less conservative neoclassical economists instead use the compensation principle, which says that an intervention is good if the total gains are larger than the total losses, even if losers are not compensated in practice.

International trade

Neoclassical economics favors free trade according to David Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage. This idea holds that free trade between two countries is always mutually beneficial because it allows the greatest total consumption in both countries.

Origins

Classical economics, developed in the 18th and 19th centuries, included a value theory and distribution theory. The value of a product was thought to depend on the costs involved in producing that product. The explanation of costs in classical economics was simultaneously an explanation of distribution. A landlord received rent, workers received wages, and a capitalist tenant farmer received profits on their investment. This classic approach included the work of Adam Smith and David Ricardo.

However, some economists gradually began emphasizing the perceived value of a good to the consumer. They proposed a theory that the value of a product was to be explained with differences in utility (usefulness) to the consumer. (In England, economists tended to conceptualize utility in keeping with the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and later of John Stuart Mill.)

The third step from political economy to economics was the introduction of marginalism and the proposition that economic actors made decisions based on margins. For example, a person decides to buy a second sandwich based on how full he or she is after the first one, a firm hires a new employee based on the expected increase in profits the employee will bring. This differs from the aggregate decision-making of classical political economy in that it explains how vital goods such as water can be cheap, while luxuries can be expensive.

Marginal revolution

The change in economic theory from classical to neoclassical economics has been called the "marginal revolution", although it has been argued that the process was slower than the term suggests. It is frequently dated from William Stanley Jevons's Theory of Political Economy (1871), Carl Menger's Principles of Economics (1871), and Léon Walras's Elements of Pure Economics (1874–1877). Historians of economics and economists have debated:

• Whether utility or marginalism was more essential to this revolution (whether the noun or the adjective in the phrase "marginal utility" is more important)
• Whether there was a revolutionary change of thought or merely a gradual development and change of emphasis from their predecessors
• Whether grouping these economists together disguises differences more important than their similarities.

In particular, Jevons saw his economics as an application and development of Jeremy Bentham's utilitarianism and never had a fully developed general equilibrium theory. Menger did not embrace this hedonic conception, explained diminishing marginal utility in terms of subjective prioritization of possible uses, and emphasized disequilibrium and the discrete; further, Menger had an objection to the use of mathematics in economics, while the other two modeled their theories after 19th-century mechanics. Jevons built on the hedonic conception of Bentham or of Mill, while Walras was more interested in the interaction of markets than in explaining the individual psyche.

Alfred Marshall's textbook, Principles of Economics (1890), was the dominant textbook in England a generation later. Marshall's influence extended elsewhere; Italians would compliment Maffeo Pantaleoni by calling him the "Marshall of Italy". Marshall thought classical economics attempted to explain prices by the cost of production. He asserted that earlier marginalists went too far in correcting this imbalance by overemphasizing utility and demand. Marshall thought that "We might as reasonably dispute whether it is the upper or the under blade of a pair of scissors that cuts a piece of paper, as to whether the value is governed by utility or cost of production".

Marshall explained price by the intersection of supply and demand curves. The introduction of different market "periods" was an important innovation of Marshall's:

• Market period. The goods produced for sale on the market are taken as given data, e.g. in a fish market. Prices quickly adjust to clear markets.
• Short period. Industrial capacity is taken as given. The level of output, the level of employment, the inputs of raw materials, and prices fluctuate to equate marginal cost and marginal revenue, where profits are maximized. Economic rents exist in short period equilibrium for fixed factors, and the rate of profit is not equated across sectors.
• Long period. The stock of capital goods, such as factories and machines, is not taken as given. Profit-maximizing equilibria determine both industrial capacity and the level at which it is operated.
• Very long period. Technology, population trends, habits, and customs are not taken as given but allowed to vary in very long period models.

Marshall took supply and demand as stable functions and extended supply and demand explanations of prices to all runs. He argued supply was easier to vary in longer runs, and thus became a more important determinant of price in the very long run.

Cambridge and Lausanne school

Cambridge and Lausanne School of economics form the basis of neoclassical economics. Until the 1930s, the evolution of neoclassical economics was determined by the Cambridge school and was based on the marginal equilibrium theory. At the beginning of the 1930s, the Lausanne general equilibrium theory became the general basis of neoclassical economics and the marginal equilibrium theory was understood as its simplification.

The thinking of the Cambridge school continued in the steps of classical political economics and its traditions but was based on the new approach that originated from the marginalist revolution. Its founder was Alfred Marshall, and among the main representatives were Arthur Cecil Pigou, Ralph George Hawtrey and Dennis Holme Robertson. Pigou worked on the theory of welfare economics and the quantity theory of money. Hawtrey and Robertson developed the Cambridge cash balance approach to theory of money and influenced the trade cycle theory. Until the 1930s, John Maynard Keynes was also influencing the theoretical concepts of the Cambridge school. The key characteristic of the Cambridge school was its instrumental approach to the economy – the role of the theoretical economist is first to define theoretical instruments of economic analysis and only just then apply them to real economic problems.

The main representatives of the Lausanne school of economic thought were Léon Walras, Vilfredo Pareto and Enrico Barone. The school became famous for developing the general equilibrium theory. In the contemporary economy, the general equilibrium theory is the methodologic basis of mainstream economics in the form of New classical macroeconomics and New Keynesian macroeconomics.

Evolution

The evolution of neoclassical economics can be divided into three phases. The first phase (= a pre-Keynesian phase) is dated between the initial forming of neoclassical economics (the second half of the nineteenth century) and the arrival of Keynesian economics in the 1930s. The second phase is dated between the year 1940 and the half of the 1970s. During this era, Keynesian economics was dominating the world's economy but neoclassical economics did not cease to exist. It continued in the development of its microeconomics theory and began creating its own macroeconomics theory. The development of the neoclassical macroeconomic theory was based on the development of the quantity theory of money and the theory of distribution. One of the products of the second phase was the Neoclassical synthesis, representing a special combination of neoclassical microeconomics and Keynesian macroeconomics. The third phase began in the 1970s and is labeled as the neoclassical renaissance, the revival of neoclassical economics. During this era, Neo-Keynesian economics was in crisis, which encouraged the creation of new neoclassical lines of thoughts such as Monetarism, New classical macroeconomics, Supply-side economics, or the Public choice theory. Despite the diverse focus and approach of these theories, they are all based on the theoretic and methodologic principles of traditional neoclassical economics.

An important change in neoclassical economics occurred around 1933. Joan Robinson and Edward H. Chamberlin, with the nearly simultaneous publication of their respective books, The Economics of Imperfect Competition (1933) and The Theory of Monopolistic Competition (1933), introduced models of imperfect competition. Theories of market forms and industrial organization grew out of this work. They also emphasized certain tools, such as the marginal revenue curve. In her book, Robinson formalized a type of limited competition. The conclusions of her work for welfare economics were worrying: they were implying that the market mechanism operates in a way that the workers are not paid according to the full value of their marginal productivity of labor and that also the principle of consumer sovereignty is impaired. This theory heavily influenced the anti–trust policies of many Western countries in the 1940s and 1950s.

Joan Robinson's work on imperfect competition, at least, was a response to certain problems of Marshallian partial equilibrium theory highlighted by Piero Sraffa. Anglo-American economists also responded to these problems by turning towards general equilibrium theory, developed on the European continent by Walras and Vilfredo Pareto. J. R. Hicks's Value and Capital (1939) was influential in introducing his English-speaking colleagues to these traditions. He, in turn, was influenced by the Austrian School economist Friedrich Hayek's move to the London School of Economics, where Hicks then studied.

These developments were accompanied by the introduction of new tools, such as indifference curves and the theory of ordinal utility. The level of mathematical sophistication of neoclassical economics increased. Paul Samuelson's Foundations of Economic Analysis (1947) contributed to this increase in mathematical modeling.

The interwar period in American economics has been argued to have been pluralistic, with neoclassical economics and institutionalism competing for allegiance. Frank Knight, an early Chicago school economist attempted to combine both schools. But this increase in mathematics was accompanied by greater dominance of neoclassical economics in Anglo-American universities after World War II. Some argue that outside political interventions, such as McCarthyism, and internal ideological bullying played an important role in this rise to dominance.

Hicks' book, Value and Capital had two main parts. The second, which was arguably not immediately influential, presented a model of temporary equilibrium. Hicks was influenced directly by Hayek's notion of intertemporal coordination and paralleled by earlier work by Lindhal. This was part of an abandonment of disaggregated long-run models. This trend probably reached its culmination with the Arrow–Debreu model of intertemporal equilibrium. The Arrow–Debreu model has canonical presentations in Gérard Debreu's Theory of Value (1959) and in Arrow and Hahn's "General Competitive Analysis" (1971).

Neoclassical synthesis

Many of these developments were against the backdrop of improvements in both econometrics, that is the ability to measure prices and changes in goods and services, as well as their aggregate quantities, and in the creation of macroeconomics, or the study of whole economies. The attempt to combine neo-classical microeconomics and Keynesian macroeconomics would lead to the neoclassical synthesis which was the dominant paradigm of economic reasoning in English-speaking countries from the 1950s till the 1970s. Hicks and Samuelson were for example instrumental in mainstreaming Keynesian economics.

The dominance of Neo-Keynesian economics was upset by its inability to explain the economic crises of the 1970s- neoclassical economics emerged distinctly in macroeconomics as the new classical school, which sought to explain macroeconomic phenomenon using neoclassical microeconomics. It and its contemporary New Keynesian economics contributed to the new neoclassical synthesis of the 1990s, which informs much of mainstream macroeconomics today.

Cambridge capital controversy

Problems exist with making the neoclassical general equilibrium theory compatible with an economy that develops over time and includes capital goods. This was explored in a major debate in the 1960s—the "Cambridge capital controversy"—about the validity of neoclassical economics, with an emphasis on economic growth, capital, aggregate theory, and the marginal productivity theory of distribution. There were also internal attempts by neoclassical economists to extend the Arrow–Debreu model to disequilibrium investigations of stability and uniqueness. However, a result known as the Sonnenschein–Mantel–Debreu theorem suggests that the assumptions that must be made to ensure that equilibrium is stable and unique are quite restrictive.

Criticisms

Although the neoclassical approach is dominant in economics, the field of economics includes others, such as Marxist, Behavioral, Schumpeterian, Developmentalist, Austrian, Post Keynesian, and Institutionalist schools. All of these schools differ with the neoclassical school and each other, and incorporate various criticisms of the neoclassical economics. Not all criticism comes from other schools: some prominent economists such as Nobel Prize recipient and former chief economist of the World Bank Joseph Stiglitz are vocally critical of mainstream neoclassical economics.

Methodology and mathematical models

Further information: Unreasonable ineffectiveness of mathematics § Economics and finance, and Financial economics § Challenges and criticism

Some see mathematical models used in contemporary research in mainstream economics as having transcended neoclassical economics, while others disagree. Mathematical models also include those in game theory, linear programming, and econometrics. Critics of neoclassical economics are divided into those who think that highly mathematical method is inherently wrong and those who think that mathematical method is useful even if neoclassical economics has other problems.

Critics such as Tony Lawson contend that neoclassical economics' reliance on functional relations is inadequate for social phenomena in which knowledge of one variable does not reliably predict another. The different factors affecting economic outcomes cannot be experimentally isolated from one another in a laboratory; therefore the explanatory and predictive power of mathematical economic analysis is limited. Lawson proposes an alternative approach called the contrast explanation which he says is better suited for determining causes of events in social sciences. More broadly, critics of economics as a science vary, with some believing that all mathematical economics is problematic or even pseudoscience and others believing it is still useful but has less certainty and higher risk of methodology problems than in other fields.

Milton Friedman, one of the most prominent and influential neoclassical economists of the 20th century, responded to criticisms that assumptions in economic models were often unrealistic by saying that theories should be judged by their ability to predict events rather than by the supposed realism of their assumptions. He claimed that, on the contrary, a theory with more absurd assumptions has stronger predictive power. He argued that a theory's ability to theoretically explain reality is irrelevant compared to its ability to empirically predict reality, no matter the method of getting to that prediction.

Objectivity and pluralism

Neoclassical economics is often criticized for having a normative bias despite sometimes claiming to be "value-free". Such critics argue an ideological side of neoclassical economics, generally to argue that students should be taught more than one economic theory and that economics departments should be more pluralistic.

Rational behavior assumptions

One of the most widely criticized aspects of neoclassical economics is its set of assumptions about human behavior and rationality. According to Edward Fullbrook, these assumptions were chosen not because they were observed to be true by studying human behavior, but because they were the required conditions to reach a market equilibrium. The "economic man", or a hypothetical human who acts according to neoclassical assumptions, does not necessarily behave the same way as humans do in reality. The economist and critic of capitalism Thorstein Veblen claimed that neoclassical economics assumes a person to be:

[A] lightning calculator of pleasures and pains, who oscillates like a homogeneous globule of desire of happiness under the impulse of stimuli that shift about the area, but leave him intact.

His characterization references a number of commonly criticized rationality assumptions: that people make decisions using a rigid utilitarian framework, have perfect information available about their options, have perfect information processing ability allowing them to immediately calculate utility for all possible options, and are independent decision-makers whose choices are unaffected by their surroundings or by other people.

While Veblen is from the Institutional school, the Behavioral school of economics is focused on studying the mechanisms of human decision-making and how they differ from neoclassical assumptions of rationality. Altruistic or empathy-based behavior is another form of "non-rational" decision making studied by behavioral economists, which differs from the neoclassical assumption that people only act in self-interest. Behavioral economists account for how psychological, neurological, and even emotional factors significantly affect economic perceptions and behaviors.

Rational choice theory need not be problematic according to a paper written by the economist Gary Becker which was published in 1962 in the Journal of Political Economy called "Irrational Behavior and Economic Theory." According to Becker, this paper demonstrates "how the important theorems of modern economics result from a general principle which not only includes rational behavior and survivor arguments as special cases, but also much irrational behavior." The specific important theorems and results which are shown to result from a broad range of different type of irrational behavior as well as rational behavior by market participants in the paper are that market demand curves are downward sloping or "negatively inclined", and that if an industry transformed from a competitive industry to a completely monopolistic cartel and profits are always maximized, then output per firm under the cartel would decrease compared to its equilibrium level when the industry was competitive.

This paper was largely based on the 1950 paper "Uncertainty, Evolution, and Economic Theory" by Armen Alchian. The paper sets out a justification for supply analysis separate from relying on the assumption of rational consumption, the representative firm and the way neoclassical economists analyze firm behavior in markets which does not apply on rational behavior by the decision makers in those firms, nor any other type of foresighted or goal directed behavior by them. Becker's subsequent 1962 paper provides an independent justification for neoclassical market demand analysis. The two papers offer separate justifications for the use of neoclassical methodology for supply and demand analysis without relying on assumptions otherwise criticised as implausible.

Methodological individualism

Neoclassical economics offers an approach to study the economic behavior of homo-economicus. This theory is based on methodological individualism and adopts an atomistic approach to social phenomena, according to which social atoms are the individuals and their actions. According to this doctrine, individuals are independent of social phenomena, but the opposite is not true. Individuals' actions can explain macro-scale behavior, and social collections are nothing more than aggregates, and they do not add anything to its components (Ibid). Although methodological individualism does not negate complex social phenomena such as institutions or behavioral rules, it argues any explanation should be based on constituent components' characteristics of those institutions. This is a reductionist approach based on which it is believed that the characteristics of the social system are derived from the individuals' preferences and their actions.

A critique of this approach is that the individuals' preferences and interests are not fixed. The structures contextualize individual's. According to social constructivists, systems are co-constituted alongside the actors, and ideas within the system define actors' identities, their interests, and thus their behavior. In this regard, actors in various circumstances (exposed to different impressions and experiences) will construct their interests and preferences differently, both within each other and over time. Given the individualistic foundation of the economic theory, critics argue that this theory should consider individual action's structural contexts.

Inequality

Neoclassical economics is often criticized as promoting policies that increase inequality and as failing to recognise the impact of inequality on economic outcomes. In the case of the former claim, neoclassical economics is often used for analysis in support of policies reducing economic inequality—in particular through determining the diminishing marginal utility of income, whereby poorer individuals gain greater net benefits from a given increase in income than comparable richer individuals, but more generally by being the primary means by which the impact on inequality of any given policy is assessed. In the case of the latter claim, neoclassical economics is the prevailing lens through which the relationship between inequality and economic outcomes is studied.

Ethics of markets

Neoclassical economics tends to promote commodification and privatization of goods due to its principle that market exchange generally results in the most effective allocation of goods. For example, some economists support markets for human organs, on the basis that it increases supply of life-saving organs and benefits willing donors financially. However, there are arguments in moral philosophy that use of markets for certain goods is inherently unethical. Political philosopher Michael Sandel summarizes that market exchanges have two ethical problems: coercion and corruption. Coercion happens because market participation may not be as free as proponents often claim: people often participate in markets because it is the only way to survive, which is not truly voluntary. Corruption describes how commodification of a good can inherently degrade its value.