Robin Marris

The purpose of this book is to publish the ideas of the late Herbert Simon and sympathetic economists, on the subject of bounded rationality, economics, cognitive science and related disciplines, and to reprint some of Professor Simon’s classic papers which have appeared in journals not widely read by economists. Not only on account of his Nobel Prize in Economics, but also because of the widespread applications of his ideas and theories, it is especially valuable to readers to have a book of this kind at the present time. Currently in this whole field, there is increasing emphasis on computer-related theory building. Herbert Simon, beginning from the time when microcomputers did not exist, was a pioneer of this approach. The book begins with an edited transcript of a colloquium, held between Herbert Simon and a group of Italian economists in Italy in 1988. It continues with the reprinted Simon papers and papers by three scholars, Raymond Boudon, Massimo Egidi and Riccardo Viale coming from different disciplines but holding a common interest in bounded rationality and ends with a response by a sympathetic economist, Robin Marris.

This path-breaking book - written by a leading economist - is certain to create controversy and will lead to a fundamental reassessment of Keynesian economics. Building on his previous work on modern capitalism, Robin Marris has made an important theoretical advance which will have a major impact on the economics profession. The book has four main aims. The first is a piece of intellectual surgery - to replace an Achilles heel in the Keynesian theory of aggregate demand and in so doing help to reduce confusion concerning the relation in Keynesian economics between employment and the real wage. The second is to support the revised theory with an economic model based on a rich, user friendly microcomputer simulation which is included free with the book. The third is to apply the model to the macroeconomic problems of the industrialized market economies in the 1970s, 80s and beyond. And finally, Robin Marris embellishes the narrative with a personal view of the relationships between Cambridge economists which sheds new light on the intellectual history of the Keynesian revolution. A brilliant and fascinating tour de force, the book is likely to provoke extreme reactions of hostility or admiration either way it advances an argument that no serious economist can afford to ignore.