On the Recent Debate on Capital Theory and General Equilibrium
AbstractThe paper disputes the negative conclusion of prof. Mandler on the thesis by Garegnani, Schefold, Parrinello that intertemporal general equilibrium theory too is undermined by reswitching and reverse capital deepening. The paper argues that Mandler’s conclusion rests upon highly criticisable assumptions that render the equations of intertemporal general equilibrium identical to those of general equilibria without capital goods. The Walrasian treatment of the capital endowment is criticized in Part I on the basis of its insufficient persistence, and of other ‘methodological’ criticisms that are systematically surveyed. In Part II it is shown through a numerical example that Mandler’s claim, that the assumption of a single consumer guarantees uniqueness of intertemporal equilibrium independently of reswitching or reverse capital deepening, rests on the absence of production of capital goods in the last period of the equilibrium; this assumption is thus revealed to be one of the tricks that prevents the existence of capital goods from changing the properties of the equilibrium relative to those of equilibria without capital
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Bibliographic InfoPaper provided by Department of Economics, University of Siena in its series Department of Economics University of Siena with number 568.
Date of creation: Sep 2009
Date of revision:
Find related papers by JEL classification:
- B51 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Current Heterodox Approaches - - - Socialist; Marxian; Sraffian
- C62 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Existence and Stability Conditions of Equilibrium
- D5 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2009-09-26 (All new papers)
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
- Enrico Sergio Levrero & Saverio M. Fratini, 2007. "Su Mandler e la Indeterminatezza Sraffiana," Departmental Working Papers of Economics - University 'Roma Tre' 0077, Department of Economics - University Roma Tre.
- Ennio Bilancini & Fabio Petri, 2008. "A Comment On Gintis's "The Dynamics of General Equilibrium"," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 2(3), pages 1-7.
- repec:ebl:ecbull:v:2:y:2008:i:3:p:1-7 is not listed on IDEAS
- Pierangelo Garegnani & Antonella Palumbo, 1997. "Accomulation of capital," Departmental Working Papers of Economics - University 'Roma Tre' 0002, Department of Economics - University Roma Tre.
- Bertram Schefold, 2005. "Reswitching As A Cause Of Instability Of Intertemporal Equilibrium," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(4), pages 438-476, November.
- Michael Mandler, 2005. "Well-Behaved Production Economies," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(4), pages 477-494, November.
- Michael Mandler, 2002. "Classical and Neoclassical Indeterminacy in One-shot Versus Ongoing Equilibria," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(3), pages 203-222, 08.
- Quah, John K. -H., 2003. "Market demand and comparative statics when goods are normal," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(3-4), pages 317-333, June.
- Saverio M. Fratini, 2008. "Economic Generality Versus Mathematical Genericity: Activity-Level Indeterminacy And The Index Theorem In Constant Returns Production Economies," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(2), pages 266-275, 05.
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