The Heterodox Economics of Gardiner C. Means

Book excerpt: This collection brings together articles written by Gardiner C. Means, a leading institutionalist and post-Keynesian economist. Means studies the modern corporation and its implications for the institution on private property and the economic systems as a whole. The selections illuminate Means' analysis of the corporate revolution, the role of administered pricing and the consequences for macro-economic instability in the American economy. The book includes the controversial theoretical chapters for his proposed Harvard dissertation, his essay on industrial prices and their inflexibility, the causes of depression, administered prices and the risk of inflation, his analysis of stagflation and the control of inflation. An essay by his widow, Caroline F. Ware, examines the resistance of the American economics profession to Means' theory of administered prices.