Toward a General Theory of Exchange

Book excerpt: The new economy, under the impetus of the ever-widening outreach of the Internet, is undergoing a transition. In the meantime, there's also been a shift to the information paradigm, with its emphasis on lack of foresight. These processes have almost completely supplanted the concept of market that was once one of the most cardinal features of conventional economic theory. In Toward a General Theory of Exchange: Strategic Decisions and Complexity, author Dr. Javaid R. Khwaja traces the slow melting of the market, the most ubiquitous contraption and the summum bonum of economic science, as an organized manifestation of complexity, with its wide-ranging impact on the flow of funds. Using the historical background of economic theories, this study blends the interdisciplinary range and fills the vacuum that has existed among current conventional economic theory, the theory of strategic decision making, actor-network theory, the domain of law and economics, and the science of complexity. An observer of economic development for several decades, Khwaja shows the relationship between technology and economics and how it affects social exchanges and trends.