Description
Product ID: | 9781839988301 |
Product Form: | Hardback |
Country of Manufacture: | GB |
Series: | Anthem Other Canon Economics |
Title: | General and Periodic Crises of Overproduction |
Authors: | Author: Jean Lescure, Nicholas Di Liberto, D'Maris Coffman, Ali Kabiri |
Page Count: | 532 |
Subjects: | Economic and financial crises and disasters, Economic & financial crises & disasters |
Description: | Select Guide Rating Jean Lescure’s General and Periodic Crises of Overproduction is a pioneering study of the causes and consequences of industrial crises in capitalist economies in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was updated periodically through five editions and now appears in English for the first time. Jean Lescure’s two-volume General and Periodic Crises of Overproduction is a pioneering study of the causes and consequences of industrial crises in capitalist economies in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The author, who held doctorates in political economy and law, is most remembered as a founder of the French historical school and a staunch advocate of empiricism in the economic sciences. Lescure called his approach the ’complex historical method’, by which he sought to revise classical and quantitative economic theory through the historical analysis and statistical observation of cyclical phenomena. Ever the controversialist, Lescure wrote in an engaging style, accessible to non-specialists and economists alike, and critiqued the leading monetary theorists of the period, insisting that observation of the movements in production costs, industrial orders and profits be given priority over circulation and credit in understanding the periodic crises of capitalist economies. In Lescure’s view, crises were inevitable in both market and command economies and their onset and consequences were predictable with the help of the more detailed production statistics newly available to economists and entrepreneurs at the time. Observation of corporate profits, the margin between cost price and selling price, provided the means to predict crises and measure their impact, not only on industry and trade but also on the working classes who would endure unemployment and the many social ills that accompany it. Lescure, unlike many of the liberal economists of the time, was always careful to include in his historical account statistical analysis of unemployment figures, as well as those on crime, marriage and birth rates, homelessness and suicide. Although he remained sceptical of government intervention in the form of monetary policies adjusting the money supply, and lauded the success of industrial concentration and trusts in reducing costs and prices, Lescure admitted the state’s role in the recovery of the 1930s, when social insurance schemes and investment in public works mitigated the worst effects of unemployment for industrial labour. |
Imprint Name: | Anthem Press |
Publisher Name: | Anthem Press |
Country of Publication: | GB |
Publishing Date: | 2023-11-14 |