On Appraising the Performance of an Economic System（ISBN=） 英文原版

This book describes and analyses the activities and procedures
through which the professional economist may advise on matters of
public policy, specifically on the performance of an economic
system. The author shows that the decision-making component within
a system may be defined in terms of optimal policies for attaining
well-specified objectives, but that the choice of rules by which
the system is governed must remain ‘outside’ the system due to its
dependence upon the legislative process. He proposes a ‘generating
mechanism’ for arriving at public policy choices based on the
interaction between the economic system and the legislative
process.

Part I. The circumstances in which the conceptual problems are
posed: legislators deliberating upon how well an economic system is
working:
1. Three main concepts that inhere in the circumstances cited
2. On the peculiarities of economics as a descriptive science
3. On norms that are implied in observers’ adverse reactions to an
economic system’s performance
Part II. A nation’s economy in geographic space and time: on the
task of specifying norms of various aspects of it:
4. On constructing a small-scale model of a nation’s population of
people
5. A provisional description of a nation’s population developing
over time while in a state of full employment
6. Concluding remarks upon what an economic system is, and the
problem of specifying norms of the outcome of its working.