Imagination and economics at the crossroads: materials for a dialogue

Roberta Patalano ()
Additional contact information
Roberta Patalano: Parthenope University, Naples and luiss University, Rome

History of Economic Ideas, 2010, vol. 18, issue 1, 167-190

Abstract: In the paper the meaning and the functions of imagination in the market are discussed. Does imagination help agents to shape their choice options? Can it contribute to economic change? And if so, how may its roles be conceptualized? As a first step we analyse the contributions offered by Kenneth Boulding and Cornelius Castoriadis. Secondly, we suggest how their insights may be reinterpreted and extended to two contemporary topics, learning and institutions. In the last part of the paper we suggest how the concept of failure may be reconsidered. Traditionally, economic literature has analysed failures that pertain to the market, to the public intervention and to strategic interactions, under the well-known labels of market, nonmarket and coordination failures. We will identify a different kind of failure which affects imagination and generates situations in which creativity and planning abilities are impaired at the individual and/or social level. The lack of inventiveness may have very costly consequences that vary from low productivity to institutional inertia, from the inability to innovate to the difficulty of rethinking economic and organisational structures. Concluding remarks follow.

Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.libraweb.net/articoli.php?chiave=201006101&rivista=61
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hid:journl:v:18:y:2010:1:8:p:167-190

Access Statistics for this article

History of Economic Ideas is currently edited by Riccardo Faucci, Nicola Giocoli, Roberto Marchionatti

More articles in History of Economic Ideas from Fabrizio Serra Editore, Pisa - Roma
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mario Aldo Cedrini ().