Category: economics
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Inventing Value: Taking a realist perspective
This is the last of four extracts from the introductory chapter of my recent book Inventing Value (Cambridge UP, 2022). “The argument builds on work from a range of disciplines, most notably economic sociology, heterodox economics and political economy, and in particular on excellent recent work in the study of finance and valuation. In recent…
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Inventing Value: Financial value vs social value?
This is the third of four extracts from the introductory chapter of my recent book Inventing Value (Cambridge UP, 2022). “The explosion of financial assets over the last few decades has transformed the world’s leading economies. The finance, insurance and real estate sector now accounts for 21% of US national income – double its level in…
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Towards a new theory of value
Different people may assess the value of a thing differently, but to reach agreement on values, they need to offer explanations of those assessments in terms that other people can find reasonable. Usually this means that they will need to invoke socially acceptable standards of value to justify their assessments. I call these standards lay theories…
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What is value?
Economics needs a theory of value, but the existing theories are thoroughly inadequate. In this post I briefly introduce the key elements of an alternative theory.
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We need to move on from existing theories of the economy
Neither the traditional economist’s focus on firms in markets nor the Marxist political economist’s focus on exploitation of wage labour by capital is a viable way of understanding the real economy. This posts proposes some steps towards an alternative view.
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Profit and Gift in the Digital Economy: extract from chapter 5
My second extract from Profit and Gift in the Digital Economy discusses the concept of a complex of appropriative practices. It contrasts various applications of the concept with Marxist approaches to capitalism as a mode of production.
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Christmas gift theory
‘Tis the season to think about the things that people do at Christmas – or at least some people in certain cultures. Let me take you on a whistlestop tour of some ideas from economics, anthropology and sociology that might cast some light on the practice of giving gifts that is so central to contemporary…
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Towards a political economy of practices
Conventional ways of understanding the economy – including critical approaches – are deeply flawed, and we need an alternative approach: a political economy of practices.