Don Lavoie

This study represents a serious challenge to conventional thinking in contemporary comparative systems, and the economics of socialism. It disputes the commonly accepted view of both the nature of the 'socialist calculation debate' of the 1930s and the lessons to be derived from it. Whereas many socialist and capitalist participants to the debate tended to talk in polar terms of central planning versus the market, the chief result of the whole controversy has been that the Neoclassical 'market-socialist' position is usually taken to represent a successful synthesis of planning with markets, a synthesis which almost completely dominates contemporary work in comparative economic systems. The author argues in fact that the famous debate has been largely misunderstood. His revisionist interpretation argues that it can no longer be viewed as a dated battle between extreme positions that have now become comfortably reconciled. Rather, the lesson is that planning and markets are fundamentally alternative co-ordination mechanisms and that the attempt to combine them tends to subvert the operation of each.

The Socialist Calculation Debate Reconsidered

Rivalry and Central Planning

What is Left?

National Economic Planning

Economics and Hermeneutics looks at the ways that hermeneutics might help economists address problems such as entrepreneurship, price theory, rational expectations, monetary theory, welfare economics and economic policy.

Economics and Hermeneutics

This collection of Ludwig Lachmann's essays challenges contemporary attitudes to economics and seeks to apply an interpretive approach to the discipline. The essays, spanning six decades, address a wide range of issues in microeconomics, macroeconomics, methodology and the history of thought. They outline Lachmann's approach to economics, with the emphasis on the meaning of human institutions in a world of unpredictable change, rather than on quantitative and stable relations. Collecting Lachmann's most important work together for the first time, it includes two essays never previously published.

Essays in Economics by Ludwig M. Lachmann

Expectations and the Meaning of Institutions

Jack C. High

Don Lavoie's published work encompasses a wide range of subjects - socialism, hermeneutics, information technology, and culture. The subjects appear unrelated, but a close examination of his research reveals an underlying unity of thought and an economics at sharp variance with the post World War II mainstream. The contributors to this volume explore the legacy of his scholarship and its implications for economics. Three themes run throughout Don Lavoie's work and are explored in these chapters, the overarching one being the importance of social intelligence to economics. Second, and related to this, was his belief that certain institutions or practices are better at creating social intelligence than others - what might be termed the primacy of liberty or voluntaryism. Thirdly, he asserted that economics is more closely aligned with the humane disciplines than with the physical. As these essays make clear, if the next generation of economists does integrate economics with the humanities, some of the credit must go to Don Lavoie. Students and scholars of economics, methodology, and the humanities more broadly will find this a provocative and enriching collection.

Essays in Honor of Don Lavoie

Humane Economics

Don Lavoie argues that the radical Left's enthusiasm for planning has been a tragic mistake and that progressive social change requires the abandonment of this traditional view. Lavoie argues that planning—whether Marxism, economic democracy, or industrial policy—can only disrupt social and economic coordination. He challenges both radicals and their critics to begin reformulating our whole notion of progressive economic change without reliance on central planning. National Economic Planning: What is Left? will challenge thinkers and policymakers of every political persuasion.

What Is Left?

Don Lavoie's published work encompassed a wide range of subjects - socialism, hermeneutics, information technology, and culture. The subjects appear unrelated, but a close examination of his research reveals an underlying unity of thought and an economics at sharp variance with the post World War II mainstream. By linking economics to other disciplines, Lavoie demonstrated that economics is closer to the humanities than to the physical sciences. The contributors to this volume explore Don Lavoie's legacy and its implications for economics.

Don Lavoie

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