Papers by Donald A. R. George
The Economic Journal, 1997
Economic Democracy, 1993
The closest approximation to a self-managed firm under capitalism is the workers’ cooperative. Su... more The closest approximation to a self-managed firm under capitalism is the workers’ cooperative. Such firms have existed for some considerable time: there were cooperative flour mills in eighteenth-century Britain and countless nineteenth-century experiments in cooperative living, some of which were inspired by the kind of anarchist ideology discussed in chapter two. Cooperatives have rarely produced a substantial proportion of economic output, though an exception to this are the workers’ cooperatives of pre-Civil War Spain. There are still relatively few cooperatives in the developed capitalist economies, though their number has been increasing over the last twenty years. There are now several thousand cooperatives in Italy, for example.
Southern Economic Journal, 1995
The meaning of quality quality change in the context of economic evolution and scientific inquiry... more The meaning of quality quality change in the context of economic evolution and scientific inquiry microeconomic foundations and empirical approaches a new approach toward measuring quality change estimation of cost reduction and income response effects a model on long-run evolutionary change long-run determinants of quality and relative process the quality of economic literature.
Mathematical Modelling for Economists, 1988
Mathematics and Computers in Simulation, 1999
Academic and applied researchers in economics have, in the last 10 years, become increasingly int... more Academic and applied researchers in economics have, in the last 10 years, become increasingly interested in the topic of chaotic dynamics. In this paper we undertake non-linear dynamical analysis of one representative time series taken from financial markets, namely the Standard and Poor's (S&P) Composite Price Index. The data is based upon (adjusted) daily data from 1928 to 1987 comprising 16 127 observations. The results in the paper, based on the Grassberger±Procaccia (GP) correlation dimension measurement in conjunction with non-linear noise filtering and the surrogate technique, show strong evidence of chaos in one of these series, the S&P 500. The analysis shows that the accuracy of results improves with the increase in the number of recording points and the length of the time series, 5000 data points being sufficient to identify deterministic dynamics.
Journal of Economic Surveys, 1999
This paper discusses the importance of nonlinear dynamics from a theoretical and an empirical poi... more This paper discusses the importance of nonlinear dynamics from a theoretical and an empirical point of view. It stresses the need for global as opposed to local analysis and develops the important concept of robustness. Using this concept, the paper argues that much modern macroeconomics can be dismissed on methodological grounds alone. The paper also deals with the empirics of hyperinflation and with the detection of chaos in financial markets.
Journal of Economic Surveys, 1995
Investigacion Economica, 2005
Resumen es: Este articulo analiza los modelos macroeconomicos de expectativas racionales (ER), de... more Resumen es: Este articulo analiza los modelos macroeconomicos de expectativas racionales (ER), desde una perspectiva metodologica. Propone una propiedad particular, ...
This paper analyses RE macromodels from the methodological perspective. It proposes a particular ... more This paper analyses RE macromodels from the methodological perspective. It proposes a particular property, robustness, which should be considered a necessary feature of scientifically valid models in economics, but which is absent from many RE macromodels. To restore this property many macroeconomists resort to detailed and implausible assumptions, which take their models a long way from simple Rational Expectations. The paper draws attention to the problems inherent in the technique of local linearisation and concludes by proposing the use of nonlinear models, analysed globally.
This paper develops a two-sector growth model in which institutional investors play a significant... more This paper develops a two-sector growth model in which institutional investors play a significant role. A necessary and suffi cient condition is established under which these investors own the entire capital stock in the long run. The dependence of the long-run growth rate on the behaviour of such investors, and the effects of a productivity increase are analysed. JEL classification. O41, O43 Acknowledgements. I am grateful to Stefano Zambelli for his advice, and to Waikato University, New Zealand, for a constructive research environment. Thanks also to the Carnegie Foundation for a grant which supported this research. Any remaining errors or omissions are entirely mine.
This paper develops a two-sector growth model in which institutional investors play a significant... more This paper develops a two-sector growth model in which institutional investors play a significant role. A necessary and sufficient condition is established under which these investors own the entire capital stock in the long run. The dependence of the long-run growth rate on the behaviour of such investors, and the effects of a productivity increase are analysed.
The paper presents a model of reliability which captures the process by which reliability is actu... more The paper presents a model of reliability which captures the process by which reliability is actually determined more accurately than the conventional analysis. In contrast to that conventional analysis, which is based on the characteristics approach, the model of this paper defines reliability as the objective probability of product failure, not as a characteristic of individual goods. Reliability, thus defined, is treated as a choice variable of the firm. The resulting model is applied to a monopolist subject to a price cap. The monopolist can vary reliability and the terms of a warranty or compensation deal in response to price-capping. The monopoly outcome, price-capped monopoly outcome, and Pareto-efficient outcome are compared. The model provides a theoretical explanation of some empirical results in the literature on electricity regulation. Key words: reliability; warranties; price-capping JEL classification: L15; L51; M21 1.
Economics of Transition, 2001
SSRN Electronic Journal
The form of association ... which if mankind continue to improve, must be expected in the end to ... more The form of association ... which if mankind continue to improve, must be expected in the end to predominate, is not that which can exist with capitalist as chief, and workpeople without a voice in the management, but the association of the labourers themselves on terms of equality, collectively owning the capital with which they carry on their operations, and working under managers elected and removable by themselves."
The paper weakens the orthodox argument that firm control of the money supply is sufficient to co... more The paper weakens the orthodox argument that firm control of the money supply is sufficient to control the rate of inflation in the medium to long run. It argues that local linearisation is not the appropriate strategy for dealing with macroeconomic models: the global dynamics should be analysed, using simulation methods if necessary. The paper provides an example of how striking analytical (including policy) results may depend as much on the method of analysing a model as on the economic assumptions upon which it is based.
The Economic Journal, 1994
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Papers by Donald A. R. George