Production and economic dynamics

de Michael A. Landesmann, Roberto Scazzieri

This volume is inspired by recent developments in two strands of economic theorising. The first one consists of various lines of research on structural economic dynamics that are based principally on three sources: John Hicks's preliminary work on traverse analysis, Luigi Pasinetti's on disproportional growth and Richard M. Goodwin's on methods of dynamic decomposition and economic fluctuations. The other strand goes back to Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen's interest in an organisational theory of production based upon the interrelationship between tasks, fund factors and material transformations. This volume proposes a new approach in the analysis structural dynamics, in which a comprehensive view of the dynamics of the whole economic system is associated with the decomposition of the latter into subunits (such as processes, industries, vertically integrated sectors, eigensectors) in order to represent the disaggregated dynamics of structural adaptation and compositional change. On the other hand, a detailed representation of micro-organisational features leads to the analysis of networks and networking processes within and amongst such subunits. In both cases, methods of decomposition feature prominently and play a critical role in the analytical representation of structural dynamics.