Publisher's Synopsis
General equilibrium economics is among the most challenging fields in modern microeconomic theory. One problem with traditional general equilibrium theory has been that it assumes purely competitive market structures. This assumption limits its usefulness in interpreting modern economies whose dominant form of competition is differentiated oligopoly. This book focuses on this deficiency and proposes a means of moving toward an oligopolistic framework. It also examines the problems of deriving useful insights from large-scale models and explores the application of input-output techniques to empirical large-scale modelling.
The volume is comprised of four general sections of interest. The first provides an introduction to general equilibrium economics, explaining its fundamental structure and uses and presenting a model of general oligopolistic equilibrium. The second concerns spatial interdependence, including the development of exact and approximate solution algorithms as well as an investigation of a Poisson process in space. Part Three examines the attempt by Austrian theorists to build a general equilibrium approach to capital and interest theory. The last area analyzes the integration of money and real sectors in Walrasian and Keynesian models, as well as the conditions for the existence of money in a stationery state and the role of money in an intertemporal general system.Kuenne's volume seeks to encourage efforts both to choose realistic problems for research and to make the results of that research accessible to the economic practitioner.
