ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents alternative approaches to mainstream economic theory, without necessarily expressing compatible points of view between them. It shows that the complexity approach’s point of departure is that the behaviour of the whole is much more complex than the behaviour of the parts. The book argues that economics should be defined as the study of the interactions among intentional agents. It suggests that although alternative microfoundations was not an issue in Keynes’s General Theory, it is an important one for Post Keynesian analysis–as well as for Keynesian economics in general, which historically faced the so-called microfoundations problem. The book examines the “investment financing” theory of prices and profit margins constitutes the real Post Keynesian alternative to mainstream microeconomics on the topic. It shows how the Post Keynesian theory of the firm can be applied to different areas of economic analysis.
