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Power and Economics

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Who Runs the Economy?

Abstract

Power and economics are not often put together as a topic. Economists—although they regularly deploy notions such as market power and bargaining power—do so unreflectively: they have little, and usually nothing, to say about the concept of power, about what power is, and how to study it. It is, it would seem, either uninteresting or difficult for economists, and in particular mainstream economics, to deal with this notion. There is little about it in the literature of economics; if you look for articles and books about power in economics, you will find very few. There are two interesting books, one by John Kenneth Galbraith and another by Kenneth Boulding, but they were maverick economists.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Galbraith (1983).

  2. 2.

    Boulding (1990).

  3. 3.

    Rothschild (1971).

  4. 4.

    Galbraith (1983), p.120.

  5. 5.

    Galbraith (1983), p.160.

  6. 6.

    Hearn (2012).

  7. 7.

    Stigler and Becker (1977).

  8. 8.

    Shapiro and Graetz (2006).

  9. 9.

    See Bordo (2004).

  10. 10.

    See MacKenzie, Muniesa, and Siu (2007).

  11. 11.

    See Donzelot (1979).

  12. 12.

    Morriss (2002).

  13. 13.

    See Wrong (2002).

  14. 14.

    Hearn (2012).

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Lukes, S., Hearn, J. (2016). Power and Economics. In: Skidelsky, R., Craig, N. (eds) Who Runs the Economy?. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58017-7_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58017-7_2

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