Exploring General Equilibrium - Hardcover

Black, Fischer

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0262023822 ISBN 13: 9780262023825

Publisher: MIT Press, 1995

Synopsis

This text presents an assessment of general equilibrium theory and what that theory reveals about business cycles, growth and labour economics. The general equilibrium approach, the author asserts, can be used to explain most of the economy's behaviour. It can explain business cycles and growth without using sticky prices, irrationality, economies of scale, or imperfect competition. It can explain the volatility of consumption, output, sales, investment and inventories with axiomatic utility and constant returns-to-scale production. It can explain temporary layoffs, job changes with and without intervening unemployment and the behaviour of vacancies. It can explain lower wages in part-time jobs, wages that increase rapidly with time on the job and the forces that cause migration from poor to rich countries. Although the general equilibrium approach can't be tested in conventional ways, it can be used to generate examples that explain stylized facts - generalized observations from the real world - that have preoccupied macroeconomists for the last decade. The author contrasts his interpretation of these facts with conventional interpretations.

About this title

About the Author:

Fischer Black was a former Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business and also at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management.

About this edition

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0262023822
• ISBN 13: 9780262023825
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 330