著者

Alex M. Thomas

出版者

The Japanease Society for the History of Economic Thought

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.64, no.2, pp.19-44, 2023-01-25 (Released:2023-08-05)

著者

Yusuke Ando Shin Kubo

出版者

The Japanease Society for the History of Economic Thought

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.64, no.1, pp.1-28, 2022-07-25 (Released:2023-02-01)

著者

岡田 章

出版者

The Japanease Society for the History of Economic Thought

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.49, no.1, pp.137-154, 2007-06-30 (Released:2010-08-05)

参考文献数

79

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This paper considers the history of game theory since von Neumann and Morgenstern published their monumental work The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior in 1944. It points out changes in research themes and discusses what game theory has achieved up to the present. The aim of von Neumann and Morgenstern was “to find the mathematically complete principles which define rational behavior for the participants in a social economy, and to derive from them the general characteristics of that behavior.” Extending the theory of von Neumann and Morgenstern, Nash classified all games as either non-cooperative games or cooperative games and defined the notion of an equilibrium point for a non-cooperative game. Nash also suggested a research program, now called the Nash program, to analyze a coop erative game by constructing a non-cooperative game model for negotiations. The main field of game theory was cooperative games in the 1950s and the 1960s. Thereafter, research trends in game theory in the 1970s and the 1980s shifted from cooperative games to non-cooperative games, led by the seminal works of Harsanyi on incomplete information games and Selten on perfect equilibrium in extensive games. This socalled non-cooperative revolution greatly promoted applications of non-cooperative game theory to economics. At the same time, researchers became increasingly dissatisfied with the strong assumption of rationality in traditional game theory, and consequently research interest turned toward two new fields in the 1990s. One is evolutionary game theory, developing out of evolutionary biology, and the other is behavioral game theory, which collaborates with psychology. Evolutionary game theory investigates dynamic processes of evolution and learning in economic behavior, and it reformulates game equilibrium as a stable stationary state of those dynamic processes. Behavioral game theory studies the structures of motivation, cognition, and reasoning in human decision-making using the methodology of experiments. This paper shows how present-day research in game theory is developing in divergent fields that consider both traditional theory based on unbounded rationality and behavioral theory exploring human bounded rationality. Game theory continues to be one of the most active research fields in economics.

著者

江里口 拓

出版者

The Japanease Society for the History of Economic Thought

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.50, no.1, pp.23-40, 2008-07-31 (Released:2010-08-05)

参考文献数

65

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The purposes of this paper are, first, to present a critique of B. Semmel's social imperialist inter-pretation of Sidney and Beatrice Webb's theories, and second, to establish the compatibility of the Webbs' ideas on “national efficiency” with the “internationalism” of the world economy. Pivotal to their program of national efficiency were the idea of “national minimum” and strategies developed at the London School of Economics (LSE).As they argued in Industrial Democracy (1897), the Webbs believed that national minimum policy should be based on free trade, and from that standpoint they criticised the protectionism of W. Ashley. However, the Webbs did not recognise the necessity for an “international minimum” as proposed by A. C. Pigou in The Economics of Welfare (1920) because effective use of the national minimum policy would by itself ensure efficiency in the British economy. This idea was affirmed with the founding of LSE (1895), which was established with the objective of promoting the application of scientific knowledge and skills (especially in areas of commerce and public administration) to the British economy. The Webbs hoped that their policies of national efficiency, which they saw as compatible with free trade, would be adopted by every civilised nation.Behind the Webbs' approach to the social imperialists were the realities of British party politics at the turn of the century, just before the blossoming of the “new liberalism.” That was the context in which they sought to realise their policies of national efficiency. It is therefore important to carefully distinguish their political behaviour from their economic thought.After the Second World War, G. Myrdal (1960) criticised the welfare state on grounds of its nationalist bias. However, the Webbs' idea of national efficiency based on free trade continues to offer an important clue to the resolution of that aporia in the logic of modern welfare states.

著者

伊藤 秀史

出版者

The Japanease Society for the History of Economic Thought

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.49, no.2, pp.52-62, 2007-12-25 (Released:2010-08-05)

参考文献数

41

被引用文献数

2

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The purpose of this article is to offer an overview of contract theory, a highly successful and active research area in microeconomics, with particular emphasis on its history and influence on modern economics.According to Bolton and Dewatripont (2005), currently a standard textbook in this field, the theory of incentives, information, and economic institutions is generally refer-red to in short as contract theory. Contract theory is thus a theory of imperfect markets, mainly because of asymmetric information such as moral hazard and adverse selection.Contract theory is also a theory of economic institutions and as such applies far beyond markets. The basic model of moral hazard and that of adverse selection both use agency (or principal-agent) relationships as the main analytical framework, in response to various attempts to lay open the black-box nature of the firm in the standard neoclassical model. Furthermore, theories of boundaries of the firm, originating out of Coase's classical work, are today analyzed in the framework of incomplete contracts that leads to the third basic model of contract theory, along with those of moral hazard and adverse selection. Although these basic models are games with specific extensive forms, they are formulated as optimization problems subject to incentive compatibility and participation conditions, and are solved without explicit reference to equilibrium concepts. Contract theory is thus related to both price theory and game theory, but it has developed its own analytical frameworks and tools to solve problems under conditions of asymmetric information or incomplete contracts.Contract theory is also a theory of incentive design. Incentive design is not important under perfect competition but is crucial when there is asymmetric information or contractual incompleteness. Myerson claims that today, “economists can define their field more broadly, as being about the analysis of incentives in all social institutions.” (Myerson 1999) I argue that it is contract theory that enables us to define today's field more broadly.

著者

西條 辰義

出版者

The Japanease Society for the History of Economic Thought

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.48, no.2, pp.51-66, 2006-12-20 (Released:2010-08-05)

参考文献数

26

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Over the past decade, a number of economists at the Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University, including myself, have been conducting experiments to test theories regarding the provision of public goods. One of our more interesting findings to date is evidence among Japanese of a trait that can be described as “spite” in the way it impacts the provision of public goods. This paper describes the purposes, method, and some results of those experiments.We have been forced to ponder economic methodology in every phase of this project. We considered the methods of neo-classical economists such as Walras and Pareto, for example, who tended primarily to analyze data without concern for the motives behind strategic choices, and we examined the approach of those experimentalists who put forth questions only after finishing their tests. To develop our own methodology, therefore, it seemed reasonable and legitimate to pose questions midway through our experiments in order to elicit the factors behind strategic choices.That reasoning led to questions concerning the validity of behavioral assumptions made by neo-classical economists, moving us well away from Milton Friedman, who pays little attention to whether those assumptions are valid or not. In this way, experimentalists in this area, including ourselves, have begun to study behavior in terms of whether it is altruistic, spiteful, or fair in the provision of public goods.In our experiments, we found that the first priority for several subjects was not the total payoff amount they could expect to receive but the ranking among them. Comparing American subjects with Japanese, we found that the American subjects tended to behave as game theory would predict, while some Japanese subjects adopted 'spiteful' strategies initially and demonstrated cooperative behavior later.Today, we believe that understanding human behavior is the central issue in social science. Adam Smith, David Hume, and other eighteenth-century thinkers were interested in the sentiment and emotion behind economic decisions, but for a long time neoclassical economists of the last century effectively avoided the factor of motivation behind human behavior. By describing the experimental method, I hope that this paper will help to open a new and challenging path to understand human economic behavior and may contribute to the development of a new economics for this century.

著者

Kayoko Misaki

出版者

The Japanease Society for the History of Economic Thought

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.64, no.1, pp.58-61, 2022-07-25 (Released:2023-02-01)

著者

古谷 豊

出版者

The Japanease Society for the History of Economic Thought

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.49, no.2, pp.1-17, 2007-12-25 (Released:2010-08-05)

参考文献数

17

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Much ink has been spent over the last few decades on James Steuart's theory on banks. Critics are united in the view that his ‘banks upon mortgage’ is an idea of central importance in Steuart's theory on banks. They propose that insofar as Steuart argued against bank lending upon mercantile credit because it is precarious, his concept of bank credit upon mortgage must be regarded as a representative pillar of his theory. This understanding has also supported the claim that Steuart's theory on banks is outmoded in the sense that it gives little or no allowance for banks providing mercantile credit.If we consider Steuart's theory on banks within his whole chain of arguments, that interpretation is open to question. Steuart's principles of political economy, including his theory on banks, are built within a historical structure. He denies bank credit based on mercantile credit, only when the society is in the infancy of trade. In his theory on banks, he posited three classifications: ‘banks upon private credit’ (i.e. upon mortgage), ‘banks upon mercantile credit, ’ and ‘banks upon public credit, ’ each with a different role in the development of the economy.Considered in this perspective, the significance of Steuart's theory on banks lies in that the principles on which bank credit is based extend according to the development of trade and industry and to the policy of statesmen. His theory of banks must be regarded as a part of his arguments on providing money in proportion to the circulation.

著者

岡田 元浩

出版者

The Japanease Society for the History of Economic Thought

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.52, no.2, pp.46-62, 2011 (Released:2019-08-20)

被引用文献数

2 2

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Abstract: This paper compares Léon Walras’s and Marx’s thoughts on labour exchange, thereby illuminating the latter’s perspective that can lead to a forceful counterargument to the neoclassical principle of labour exchange, for which the former affords a foundation. Both Walras and Marx distinguish between labour ability as a factor of production and labour as its service, but exhibit a striking contrast in their explanations of the distinction. Walras’s distinction between ‘personal faculties’ and labour never attempts to reveal the peculiarities of the relationship they share. Walras essentially equates the relationship between the two with that between non-human factors and their respective services by stripping the former of human elements. This not only allows labour exchange to be incorporated into Walras’s general equilibrium system but also provides the groundwork for its neoclassical principle, which, on the basis of marginal theory, assumes work conditions to be determinable through the stylised market adjustment of the demand and supply of labour on each entrepreneur’s and worker’s maximisation behaviour. In contrast, especially in his pre-Capital writings, Marx underlines the worker’s subjectivity in deciding her labour performance. This implies that the type and intensity of time-unit labour varies depending on the worker’s will and the constraints upon it. Accentuating the particular characteristics of the relationship between labour power and labour in this way, Marx’s arguments lead to the invalidation of the neoclassical principle of labour exchange and rationalise the intervention of socio-political factors represented by the labour-capital class struggle in the determination of work conditions. Thus, this study focuses on the potential of Marx’s labour power-labour distinction independent of his exploitation theory-the basis of a weighty refutation of the neoclassical system. JEL classification numbers: B 13, B 14.

著者

Kayoko Misaki

出版者

The Japanease Society for the History of Economic Thought

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.63, no.2, pp.65-66, 2022-01-25 (Released:2022-11-04)

著者

Robert Chapeskie Shin Kubo Naoki Mastuyama

出版者

The Japanease Society for the History of Economic Thought

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.63, no.1, pp.23-58, 2021 (Released:2022-01-13)

著者

Kayoko Misaki

出版者

The Japanease Society for the History of Economic Thought

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.62, no.2, pp.26-66, 2020 (Released:2021-12-02)

著者

南森 茂太

出版者

The Japanease Society for the History of Economic Thought

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.50, no.1, pp.62-78, 2008-07-31 (Released:2010-08-05)

参考文献数

41

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Takahira Kanda, with his lifelong interest in economic problems, was a pioneering scholar, teacher, and translator of Western economics in Japan. His Keizai shogaku [Elementary Economics] (1867), for which he translated Western-language sources, is particularly well-known. But it is an earlier work, Noshoben [An Exact Explanation of an Agrarian Nation and a Merchant Nation], published in 1861 that is the focus of this paper. In this book, Kanda's economic thinking appears radical by the standards of the time. It has drawn the attention of economic historians for what they see as a liberal side, and its arguments have often been compared with Western economics. What scholars have tended to overlook, however, is the side of Noshoben that clearly reflects the economic thought prevailing in Japan at the time.Contrary to the current image of Noshoben, this paper attempts to demonstrate that Kanda's thought was largely based on the economic thought of the Edo era. In that book, he argued that taxes on farmers were the cause of the budget deficit and the poverty of farmers, and that those conditions invited aggression by foreign countries, which meant, he said, the necessity of reforming the existing tax system. He proposed tax reform by treating revenue from farm products as commercial profits, and he argued that promoting foreign trade would be effective to increase commercial profits. Those ideas were not new. We can find them in the work of Toshiaki Honda, for example, who wrote most of his treatises in the late 18th century. Nonetheless, Noshoben had considerable originality. For instance, while many Edo era economists regarded merchants as wily and untrustworthy, encouraging the shogunate or feudal rulers to maintain strict control over trade with foreign countries, Kanda recognized the important role merchants could play in external trade, and, consequently, in strengthening the domestic economy. His idea of imposing a tax on the profits of merchants was radical at that time.

著者

竹永 進

出版者

The Japanease Society for the History of Economic Thought

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.61, no.2, pp.84-85, 2020 (Released:2020-02-29)

著者

Timm Graßmann

出版者

The Japanease Society for the History of Economic Thought

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.60, no.1, pp.58-78, 2018 (Released:2019-09-03)

被引用文献数

1 2

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Abstract: With the continuing publication of the complete works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe, MEGA), a bulk of new material concerning Marxʼs studies of economic crises has been made available-with further releases expected to follow. These publications have revealed Marxʼs enormous efforts to examine in detail every economic cri-sis through which he lived. The most prominent examples are the three Books of Crisis (Kris-enhefte), which he compiled in 1857-58 amidst the first truly global economic crisis. This paper sets out to, first, provide an overview of new MEGA-texts regarding Marxʼs studies of contemporaneous 19th century revulsions. In the main part, a closer look will be taken at the origin of Marxʼs crisis studies in the 1840s. A comparison between his notes on James Millʼs Elements of Political Economy, written in the Paris Notebooks (1844), and his excerpts from John Stuart Millʼs Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy, taken in his Manchester Notebooks (1845), reveals Marxʼs changing stance on classical political econo-myʼs ʻgeneral glut controversy,ʼ i.e., the debate over the (im)possibility of overproduction cri-ses in commodity-producing societies. In between his stays in Paris and Manchester, Marx took extensive notes on the works of Simonde de Sismondi in his Brussels Notebooks (1845), which played a major role in his break from anthropological-essentialist thinking. JEL classification numbers: B 00, B 51, E 32

著者

壽里 竜

出版者

The Japanease Society for the History of Economic Thought

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.50, no.2, pp.101-102, 2009-02-05 (Released:2010-08-05)

著者

山根 卓二

出版者

The Japanease Society for the History of Economic Thought

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.50, no.2, pp.21-37, 2009-02-05 (Released:2010-08-05)

参考文献数

54

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By exploring a theory of human sciences that is the basis of Karl William Kapp's concept of institutional economics, this paper aims to clarify the originality of his social cost theory. The difference between the so-called external dis-economy theory, which is part of mainstream economics, and Kapp's social cost theory is a disagreement about rationality. The former assumes that entrepreneurial behavior to maximize profit is simply rational. Therefore, the cause of social loss, such as environmental disruption is not attributed to the entrepreneurial behavior per se, but is attributed to externalities called “exceptional cases.”On the other hand, in Kapp's social cost theory, irrational human actors are assumed. Kapp, who lived through Nazi oppression, and who was inspired by the methodology of psychologist Erich Fromm, sought to explain human irrationality by people's self-deceptive behaviors. In the background of conscious corporate desire for money and profit are the wholly unconscious human needs for stability, continuity, power, and social approval. And the fulfillment of these needs might be pursued even at the price of one's existence or well-being. For Kapp, social cost is a socio-pathological phenomenon generated collectively by enterprisers who, in their conscious minds, firmly believe themselves to be “sane.” While mainstream economics might define rationality solely from the perspective of monetary desire, Kapp takes unconscious needs into consideration as well as conscious needs, and seeks to define rationality within a comprehensive structure of human need, including biological and cultural needs. This is what is called substantive rationality. In order to develop this standard, Kapp's theory had to integrate economics with other social sciences, and even with the natural sciences.

著者

Keith Tribe

出版者

The Japanease Society for the History of Economic Thought

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.49, no.1, pp.155-160, 2007-06-30 (Released:2010-08-05)

参考文献数

6

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The modern market economy which we seek to build should have a decidedly social constitution. Its social character is based primarily on the fact that it is able to offer a greater and more varied quantity of goods at prices determined by the demands of the consumer, the resulting low prices raising the real value of wages and thereby permitting a greater and more extensive satisfaction of human needs.

著者

中井 大介

出版者

The Japanease Society for the History of Economic Thought

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.48, no.1, pp.46-62, 2006-06-30 (Released:2010-08-05)

参考文献数

37

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While Henry Sidgwick may be best known as a moral philosopher and the author of The Methods of Ethics (1874), he made notable contributions spanning economics and other fields as well, one of them being The Principles of Political Economy (1883). Even now The Methods and its treatment of utilitarianism is recognized as an authoritative model for ethical theory, but his conclusion that there is a “dualism of practical reason” has generated a great deal of controversy. The relationship between these two works has not yet been fully analyzed in the scholarly and critical literature. In this paper I demonstrate that the structure of the argument in The Principles is closely related to The Methods.Sidgwick distinguishes economics as a Science (what is) from economics as an Art (what ought to be) based on two moral principles, egoism and utilitarianism, both explicated in The Methods. Sidgwick's Science/Art distinction is instantiated by his distinction between “economic man” and “ordinary man.” Economic man is an abstraction signifying economic behavior based on self-interest. In Sidgwick's argument, Science can employ the idea of economic man to objectively analyze a society where self-interested economic behavior is the norm. Ordinary man, on the other hand, is the ideal of economic behavior motivated by moral rules based on both self-interest and utilitarianism. Art defines those governmental activities desired in a society consisting of “ordinary men.”Self-interested economic activity does not necessarily achieve the preferred results. When it leads to monopoly, for example, it works to reduce social production. The dilemma of Sidgwick's “dualism of practical reason” is the generation of conflict between the outcome of economic man's behavior and the desired results of behavior by ordinary man. As I attempt to show here, in The Principles Sidgwick constructed a role for government that would resolve that problem. Furthermore, using the distinction between Science and Art, and introducing egoism and utilitarianism, Sidgwick tried to resuscitate the ideas of the classical school of political economy.

著者

James M. Buchanan Masazumi Wakatabe Yong J. Yoon

出版者

The Japanease Society for the History of Economic Thought

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.48, no.1, pp.124-138, 2006-06-30 (Released:2010-08-05)