Jeffrey Sachs，Xiaokai Yang：Development Economics:Inframarginal Versus Marginal Analyses(2000) PDF 英文
书名：Development Economics:Inframarginal Versus Marginal Analyses
著者：乔治·杰梅森（George. Jamieson,）
出版社：布莱克维尔出版社公司（Blackwell, LIMITED）
出版日期：2000年7月
文件格式：Pdf
文件大小：12.2MB
书籍清晰度：清晰
页数：657页
简介：
Preface
The core of classical mainstream economics represented by William Petty and Adam Smith was development economics. The classical development economics differed from neoclassical development economics in two aspects. It focused on development implications of division of labor and it emphasized the role of the market (the invisible hand) in exploiting productivity gains from the division of labor. As shown in this textbook, inframarginal analysis of individuals' networking decisions is essential for formalizing the classical development economics. Here inframarginal analysis is the total cost-benefit analysis across corner solutions in addition to the marginal analysis of each corner solution. If the optimum value of a decision variable takes on its upper or lower bound, the optimal decision is a corner solution. Formally, it relates to nonlinear programming, mixed integer programming, dynamic programming, the control theory, and other nonclassical mathematical programming.
The first decision that you have to make when you get in the university is to choose a major. If you choose economics as your major, then you do not go to classes of chemistry and physics, but you take classes of microeconomics, macroeconomics, and econometrics. We call such a decision an inframarginal decision, since values of decision variables discontinuously jump between zero and interior values as you shift between majors. After you have chosen a major, you allocate your limited time between the fields in this major. This decision of resource allocation for a given major (or occupation) is called marginal decision since standard marginal analysis is applicable to this type of decision. The aggregate outcome of all students' choices of their majors in a university generates division of students among majors and fields, which is analogous to a structure of division of labor in society.
But when Alfred Marshall formalized classical economics within a mathematical framework in the end of the 19th century, he did not know inframarginal analysis. He made an assumption of dichotomy between pure consumers' decisions and firms' decisions to avoid inframarginal analysis of corner solutions. Within the neoclassical framework, each pure consumer must buy all goods from the market and cannot choose her level of self-sufficiency or its reciprocal: level of specialization. Hence, the focus of economics shifted from inframarginal analysis of problems of economic development concerning how the degree of scarcity can be reduced by division of labor in society to marginal analysis of problems of resource allocation for given degree of scarcity. Neoclassical development economics departures, by following the neoclassical framework, from classical development economics. Hence, neoclassical development economics loses the central position that classical development economics occupied in the mainstream economics. Some neoclassical development economists departure from classical development economics also by their advocacy for state-planned industrialization and development.
Since the 1950s, economists have applied inframarginal analysis to various decision problems. However, many economists still follow Marshall’s assumption of dichotomy between pure consumers and firms, under which the corner solution is exceptional and the interior solution is the rule. Hence, implications of formal inframarginal analysis for investigating effects of network size of division of labor on economic development could