The empire of value
Subtitle: a new foundation for economics
By: André Orléan ; translated by M. B. DeBevoise
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 350
ISBN-13: 9780262026970
Subjects: Economics; Value
Work titles: Empire de la valeur
Description: "With the advent of the 2007-2008 financial crisis, the economics profession itself entered into a crisis of legitimacy from which it has yet to emerge. Despite the obviousness of their failures, however, economists continue to rely on the same methods and to proceed from the same underlying assumptions. André Orléan challenges the neoclassical paradigm in this book, with a new way of thinking about perhaps its most fundamental concept, economic value. Orléan argues that value is not bound up with labor, or utility, or any other property that preexists market exchange. Economic value, he contends, is a social force whose vast sphere of influence, amounting to a kind of empire, extends to every aspect of economic life. Markets are based on the identification of value with money, and exchange value can only be regarded as a social institution. Financial markets, for example, instead of defining an extrinsic, objective value for securities, act as a mechanism for arriving at a reference price that will be accepted by all investors. What economists must therefore study, Orléan urges, is the hold that value has over individuals and how it shapes their perceptions and behavior."--book jacket.
Notes: Translation of the author's L'empire de la valeur.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 325-342) and index.

Translated from the French.
Table of contents: title: Introduction -- -- part I.; title: Critique of political economy. -- 1.; title: Substance value ; -- 2.; title: Market objectivity ; -- 3.; title: Scarcity and status -- -- part II.; title: The institution of value. -- 4.; title: Money ; -- 5.; title: A new approach to value -- -- part III.; title: Market finance. -- 6.; title: Financial valuation ; -- 7.; title: Liquidity and speculation -- -- part IV.; title: Self-referential finance and the subprime crisis. -- 8.; title: Euphoria, 2003 to 2007 ; -- 9.; title: The crisis, 2007 to 2008 --; title: Conclusion.