Collected Papers of Kenneth J. Arrow, Volume 5: Production and Capital

by Kenneth J. Arrow

Overview

Unlike the papers of some other great economists, those of Kenneth Arrow are being read and studied today with even greater care and attention than when they first appeared in the journals. The publication of his collected papers will therefore be welcomed by economists and other social scientists and in particular by graduate students, who can draw from them the deep knowledge and the discernment in selection of scientific problems that only a master can offer. The author has added headnotes to certain well-known papers, describing how he came to write them.

The study of production is central to economic theory, and capital and its accumulation are two of the most interesting aspects of the modern production process. Capital may take the form of inventories of inputs, inventories of outputs, or machines and other fixed goods. The essential and unique aspect of all types of capital is that it must be accumulated as the result of prior stages of the production process. This gives the dynamic theory of production a recursive structure that can be exploited by economic analysis. The optimization of production under recursive conditions lends itself to general mathematical methods of dynamic programming and optimal control theory. This is the main theme of the essays included in this fifth volume of Kenneth Arrow's Collected Papers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674137776
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	09/30/1985
Series:	Collected Papers of Kenneth J. Arrow Series , #5
Pages:	496
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 2.00(d)

About the Author

A past president of the American Economic Association, Kenneth J. Arrow was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science in 1972.

Table of Contents

1. On the Use of Winds in Right Planning

2. Optimal Inventory Policy

3. Capital-Labor Substitution and Economic Efficiency

4. Economic Welfare and the Allocation of Resources for Invention

5. Optimal Capital Adjustment

6. Optimal Advertising Policy under Dynamic Conditions

7. The Economic Implications of Learning by Doing

8. Optimal Capital Policy, the Cost of Capital, and Myopic Decision Rules

9. Knowledge, Productivity, and Practice

10. Criteria for Social Investment

11. Discounting and Public Investment Criteria

12. Some Tests of the International Comparisons of Factor Efficiency with the CES Production Function: Reply

13. Optimal Capital Policy with Irreversible Investment

14. Applications of Control Theory to Economic Growth

15. Classificatory Notes on the Production and Transmission of Technological Knowledge

16. Optimal Consumer Allocation over an Infinite Horizon

17. Optimal Public Investment Policy and Controllability with Fixed Private Savings Ratio

18. Uniqueness of the Internal Rate of Return with Variable Life of Investment

19. The Social Discount Rate

20. Optimal Growth with Irreversible Investment in a Ramsey Model

21. Uncertainty and the Evaluation of Public Investment Decisions

22. Uncertainty and the Evaluation of Public Investment Decisions: Reply

23. A Production Function for the Repairman Problem

24. The Measurement of Real Value Added

Index