Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Biondi on Schumpeter's neglected pages

Schumpeter's Economic Theory and the Dynamic Accounting View of the Firm: Neglected Pages from the Theory of Economic Development is a new article by Yuri Biondi, CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique). Only the abstract is posted on SSRN. The paper will appear in Economy and Society (November 2008). Here's the abstract:
The first English translation of some of Schumpeter's (1926) pages of the "Theory of Economic Development" is presented. These neglected pages are remarkable because they significantly add to Schumpeter's masterpiece on a number of issues concerned with accounting, law and economics of the firm. They show that Schumpeter considered understanding the firm, together with innovation, as important scientific problems. Schumpeter doubts the explanatory value of proprietary entrepreneurship and provides an early justification of the dynamic entity view of business activity generated by the firm as a becoming concern. He discusses its implications for understanding issues of economic organization and corporate governance, and suggests some theoretical insights concerning business capital and money under conditions of real dynamics and complexity. The doors opened by Schumpeter indicate that money and accounting are fundamentally coupled as complementary institutions in framing and shaping the economic and monetary process of the firm as an enterprise entity.
Image credit:
Joseph Schumpeter.