This book summarizes some issues involved in developing a theory of decentralized resource allocation mechanism in infinite horizon economies. It constitutes a definitive account of cutting-edge research on a topic of continuing importance in price theory. .

The intertemporal decentralization literature scrutinizes the ability of markets to achieve dynamically optimal allocation of resources. Put differently, it examines the possibility of designing a mechanism enabling short-lived agents to make independent decisions compatible with long-run optimum. The Hurwicz and Weinberger impossibility result states that the mechanisms that are both privacy preserving and optimal fail to exist when an infinite-horizon optimum is defined by Ramsey-type criteria with discounting. However, for a special case where the economy cannot sustain growth and agents do not discount future utilities, it is known that a decentralized mechanism using rolling plans is in a certain sense asymptotically optimal. To address the problem of possibility of decentralization mechanisms in a sustainable growth economy with discounting, I consider a 'discounted maximin' optimality criterion. It selects the programs that sustain growth of welfare at a given rate. The article argues that this criterion is consistent with the principles of intergenerational justice, which can be defined in terms of intergenerational Nash equilibrium. Furthermore, the article demonstrates that a decentralized mechanism designed on the basis of rolling plans generates decisions that are asymptotically optimal in terms of the discounted maximin.

The main purpose of Lectures on Macroeconomics is to characterize and explain fluctuations in output, unemployment and movement in prices. Lectures on Macroeconomics provides the first comprehensive description and evaluation of macroeconomic theory in many years. While the authors' perspective is broad, they clearly state their assessment of what is important and what is not as they present the essence of macroeconomic theory today.The main purpose of Lectures on Macroeconomics is to characterize and explain fluctuations in output, unemployment and movement in prices. The most important fact of modern economic history is persistent long term growth, but as the book makes clear, this growth is far from steady. The authors analyze and explore these fluctuations. Topics include consumption and investment; the Overlapping Generations Model; money; multiple equilibria, bubbles, and stability; the role of nominal rigidities; competitive equilibrium business cycles, nominal rigidities and economic fluctuations, goods, labor and credit markets; and monetary and fiscal policy issues. Each of chapters 2 through 9 discusses models appropriate to the topic. Chapter 10 then draws on the previous chapters, asks which models are the workhorses of macroeconomics, and sets the models out in convenient form. A concluding chapter analyzes the goals of economic policy, monetary policy, fiscal policy, and dynamic inconsistency. Written as a text for graduate students with some background in macroeconomics, statistics, and econometrics, Lectures on Macroeconomics also presents topics in a self contained way that makes it a suitable reference for professional economists.

This and its companion volume, "The Economics of Imperfect Competition and Employment", are about Joan Robinson, her impact on modern economics, her challenges and critiques and the advances made in the science and art of economics.

"Funded in part by The Heller-Hurwicz Economics Institute, University of Minnesota"--Title page.

Property and Prices provides the missing theoretical link between Sraffa's Production of Commodities and Debreu's Theory of Value. It does so by placing arbitrage and speculation in the stock market at the centre of the theory of value and capital.

There have been systematic attempts over the last twenty-five years to explore the implications of decision making with incomplete information and to model an 'economic man' as an information-processing organism. These efforts are associated with the work of Roy Radner, who joins other analysts in this collection to offer accessible overviews of the existing literature on topics such as Walrasian equilibrium with incomplete markets, rational expectations equilibrium, learning, Markovian games, dynamic game-theoretic models of organization, and experimental work on mechanism selection. Some essays also take up relatively new themes related to bounded rationality, complexity of decisions, and economic survival. The collection overall introduces models that add to the toolbox of economists, expand the boundaries of economic analysis, and enrich our understanding of the inefficiencies and complexities of organizational design in the presence of uncertainty.