Dictionary of Economics [antikvár]

In the twenty-year period which separates the first and this fifth edition of the Dictionary of Economics major changes have affected both the method and substance of economics. Still large-ly descriptive and institutional in 1949, economics in the last two decades has become a discipline increasingly analytical in temper and quantitative in its methodology. As respects its substance, there has been a growing accommodation to what is popularly known as the "new economics," a term which, however ambiguous, usually refers to the macro-economic theories and concepts provided by J. M. Keynes in his General Theory, published in 1936, by certain of his contemporaries, and by subsequent writers. With increasing frequency, moreover, these theories and concepts of the new economics have been used as tools by priváté and public bodies to formulate fiscal and mone-tary policies, to introduce a greater degree of social equity, to maintain equilibrium in economic life between the extremes of severe depression and intolerable inflation and, in generál, to discipline and manage the economic life of individual nations.Admittedly, an arbitrary alphabetical arrangement of terms in a dictionary is scarcely calculated to make explicit the qualitative nature, the intensity, or the rangé of change as fundamental as this has been. The authors are nevertheless hopeful that this change will at least be reflected in the selection of termsboth those included and those excludedin the extent of the space accorded various entries, and in their occasional editorial com-ments or value judgments. As respects their policy in selecting entries, the authors are hopeful, alsó, that eventual users of this book will acknowledge their intention, however imperfectly ex-ecuted, of providing a reference work relevant to the needs of students and practitioners of post-Keynesian economics.The authors wish to make it clear that they have sought to make this Dictionary representative of the entire field of econom-