The production process and economic dynamics

The aim of this volume is to develop a new conceptual framework for the analysis of the interrelationship between productive structures and economic dynamics. This will be done by investigating the relationship between sectoral representations of the dynamics of economic systems and more detailed analyses of productive organisations and economic change.

The theory of economic dynamics is by now an established tradition in the discipline. In extreme synthesis, a number of distinct approaches to economic dynamics may be identified. One approach considers the relationships between elements of an economic system within a given time interval, and exposes them to the impact of certain ‘impulses’, such as changes in exogenous variables or parameters. (Stability analysis in a general equilibrium framework of the neoclassical or classical type is an example of this approach to dynamic theory). Another approach, which is characteristically pursued by multisectoral analysis, concentrates upon the evolution over time in the composition of macroeconomic variables such as overall employment or investment. A third approach views dynamic processes in terms of relationships between the rates of change of economic variables (for instance employment growth, technical progress, rate of accumulation). This approach has its roots in Harrodian macrodynamics and has received considerable attention in the recent literature on economic dynamics.

A common, if seldom explicitly acknowledged, feature of all three approaches is the relevance of structural constraints, and of their evolution over time, in determining the dynamic paths followed by the economic system.