The question this paper poses relates to the role of economic theories in gaining wider support around political agendas. That is their ability to describe a problem in such a way, so that the “answer” would appear not as a political demand in favor of one class, but as a prerequisite for...

This paper presents a personal view of the interaction between the analysis of choice under uncertainty and the analysis of production under uncertainty. Interest in the foundations of the theory of choice under uncertainty was stimulated by applications of expected utility theory such as the...

We propose a method based on the distance function to empirically estimate the social cost arising from rent seeking behaviour in declining industries. Due to import competition, the factors of a particular industry undergo losses in real income, and have incentives to seek protection. In the...

The paper develops an extension of a one period model of production involving beginning and end of the period capital stocks along with output and input flows that is due to Hicks and Edwards and Bell. This generalized Austrian model of production takes into account that end of the period...

This paper investigates the effect of trade and outsourcing on demand for labour in France, including the role of exports. We analyse the impact of outsourcing - imported inputs - on unskilled labour in manufacturing industry during 1990-2002 and find that outsourcing has a significant negative...

The translog cost function is used to analyze import demand for wheat differentiated by class and country of origin in the Japanese wheat flour milling industry. Results indicate that U.S. wheat faces strong competition in the Japanese wheat market, but its multiple classes and end-use...

When the price of an input factor to a production process increases, then the optimal output level declines and the input is substituted by other factors. Marshall's rule is a formula that determines the own-price elasticity for one factor as a weighted sum of the elasticities of output market...

How relevant is the notion of evolution for economics? In view of the paradigmatic influence of Darwinian thought, several recently advocated interpretations are discussed first which rely on Darwinian concepts. As an alternative, a notion of evolution is suggested that is based on a few,...

The fund-flow approach to production theory was first proposed by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen almost half a century ago. Since then, from time to time it has received attention, but, probably because of its analytical complexity and difficulty to deliver sound "operational conclusions", it is now...