Symmetry and Economic Invariance, 2nd Edition

Symmetry and Economic Invariance (second enhanced edition) explores how the symmetry and invariance of economic models can provide insights into their properties. Although the professional economist of today is adept at many of the mathematical techniques used in static and dynamic optimization models, group theory is still not among his or her repertoire of tools. The authors aim to show that group theoretic methods form a natural extension of the techniques commonly used in economics and that they can be easily mastered. Part I provides an introduction that minimizes prerequisites including prior knowledge of group theory. Part II discusses recent developments in the field.

Table of Contents

Part I Introduction
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Technical Progress and Economies of Scale:Concept of Holotheticity
Chapter 3: Holothetic Production Functions and Marginal Rate of Technical Substitution
Chapter 4: Utility and Demand
Chapter 5: Duality and Self Duality
Chapter 6: The Theory of Index Numbers
Chapter 7: Dynamics and Conservation Laws

Part II Recent Developments
Chapter 8: The Invariance Principle and Income-Wealth Conservation Laws
Chapter 9: Conservation Laws in Continuous and Discrete Models
Chapter 10: Quantity or Quality: The Impact of Labour SavingInnovation on US and Japanese Growth Rates, 1960–2004
Chapter 11: A Survey on Recent Developments