General Equilibrium, Capital and Macroeconomics

Book excerpt: 'Fabio Petri has been a persistent critic of marginalist theories of value and distribution. In this provocative book, he presents an extensive scrutiny of the reasons why many economists are unsatisfied with the Neo-Walrasian approach to General Equilibrium theory and why some reject it altogether. General Equilibrium, Capital and Macroeconomics throws down a challenge to all economic theorists.' - Neri Salvadori, University of Pisa, Italy 'General Equilibrium, Capital and Macroeconomics is a thorough and deep book. It contains a remarkably clear and precise statement of the conceptual, methodological and analytical difficulties besetting the demand and supply approach to economics as it is advocated in partial and general equilibrium models, old and new, micro and macro. This work covers essential parts of modern economics, it is well written and the subject matter is carefully arranged. The book will be of interest to a wide range of economists.' - Heinz D. Kurz, University of Graz, Austria This book argues that the shift in general equilibrium theory, from its early long-period to the modern very-short-period versions, has had very important consequences which are insufficiently appreciated by large parts of the economics profession. This shift has produced new difficulties, and has undermined central tenets of neoclassical macroeconomic theory (such as the negative dependence of aggregate investment on the interest rate, or the existence of a downward-sloping demand curve for labour) which had their basis in the long-period versions where capital was treated as a single factor.