I'm practically done with this book (by Tom Slee, who also has

a web site, not exactly a blog -- http://whimsley.typepad.com/.

I started it after despairing of getting through Sam Bowles'

Microeconomics as subway reading.  For Bowles you need --

I need -- to be sitting at my desk with a yellow pad and some

sharp pencils.  But the themes are substantially the same.

Curiously Slee never cites Bowles, though he does acknowledge

debts to a host of others.  For someone doing an avant-garde

micro course, Slee's book would be of great value.



In both cases what neo-classicals call market failure is

ubiquitous.  There is strategic interaction that results in

multiple and inferior equilibria, externalites with  prohibitive

costs of bargaining, decreasing costs, etc.



The Bowles approach like 'new behavioral economics' strikes

me as still deeply wedded to n-c methodology.  We still have utility

functions, and optimization, albeit with interaction, externality,

and limited information.  Since I have a weakness for n-c micro

the elaborations seem relevant as well, though not necessarily

the only valid approach.



Seems to me that the radical criticism of n-c micro dwells on

its failure as behavioral prediction.  But the idealized models

are also taken as a framework for optimized plans by a

benevolent authority.  It's true that those results are then

taken to be reachable via competitive markets (sic), but that's

a separate -- laughable -- matter.




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