IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/palchp/978-1-349-26255-7_9.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

An Analytical Framework of Consumer-Producers, Economies of Specialization and Transaction Costs

In: Increasing Returns and Economic Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Mei Wen

Abstract

Samuelson (1967) and Alfred Marshall (1920) consider the essence of economics as the analysis of demand and supply. However, there are two research lines of demand and supply. (1) is Marshall’s line: demand and supply are determined by the tradeoff between quantities of different goods consumed in raising utility and the tradeoff between quantities of different factors in raising output. Relative demand in equilibrium is determined by relative taste, relative technology and relative endowments. Aggregate demand is not the focus of the analysis and is given by the dichotomy between pure consumers and pure producers. In other words, resource allocation is the focus in neoclassical economic theory. Most resource allocation problems are solved in mathematical programming models. (2) is Allyn Young’s line: demand and supply are two sides of the level of division of labour (or its reciprocal the degree of self-sufficiency). The level of specialization and division of labour determines the extent of the market and aggregate demand and supply (Young, 1928, p. 539). Hence, we cannot understand what are demand and supply if we do not know the mechanism that determines individuals’ level of specialization and the level of division of labour for a society as a whole.

Suggested Citation

  • Mei Wen, 1998. "An Analytical Framework of Consumer-Producers, Economies of Specialization and Transaction Costs," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Kenneth J. Arrow & Yew-Kwang Ng & Xiaokai Yang (ed.), Increasing Returns and Economic Analysis, chapter 7, pages 170-185, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-349-26255-7_9
    DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-26255-7_9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Guangzhen Sun & Xiaokai Yang & Shuntian Yao, 1999. "Theoretical Foundation of Economic Development Based on Networking Decisions in the Competitive Market," CID Working Papers 16, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
    2. Xiaokai Yang & Dingsheng Zhang, 2005. "Endogenous Structure Of The Division Of Labor, Endogenous Trade Policy Regime, And A Dual Structure In Economic Development," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: An Inframarginal Approach To Trade Theory, chapter 17, pages 383-406, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    3. Sun, Guang-Zhen & Yang, Xiaokai & Zhou, Lin, 2004. "General equilibria in large economies with endogenous structure of division of labor," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 237-256, October.
    4. Haiou Zhou, 2009. "Evolutionary Dynamics of the Market Equilibrium with Division of Labor∗," Monash Economics Working Papers 12-09, Monash University, Department of Economics.
    5. Cheng, Wenli & Yang, Xiaokai, 2004. "Inframarginal analysis of division of labor: A survey," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 137-174, October.
    6. Diamantaras, Dimitrios & Gilles, Robert P., 2004. "On the microeconomics of specialization," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 223-236, October.
    7. Dan Yang & Zimin Liu, 2012. "Study on Chinese farmer cooperative economy organization and agricultural specialization," Agricultural Economics, Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences, vol. 58(3), pages 135-146.
    8. Petrenko, D. S., 2018. "Inframarginal models of spatially allocated economic structures and the analysis of production processes," R-Economy, Ural Federal University, Graduate School of Economics and Management, vol. 4(2), pages 72-78.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-349-26255-7_9. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.