{"title":"Adam Smith's Treatment of Market Prices and Their Relation to \"Supply\" and \"Demand\"","authors":"T. Aspromourgos","doi":"10.1400/91014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1400/91014","url":null,"abstract":"Smith’s approach to market prices is a dynamic conception of price adjustment in response to market imbalance, in terms of deviation of actual prices from normal price. Latter-day demand functions are not part of this conception. Neither are latter- day supply functions – and relations between quantity produced and normal price are highly contingent, depending on competing factors in each particular industry, as well as forces external to particular industries. His analyses of situations in which production is inelastic in relation to effectual demand confirms a tacit supposition of his treatment of market prices: demand-prices are incapable of determinate theoretical expression.","PeriodicalId":38602,"journal":{"name":"History of Economic Ideas","volume":"15 1","pages":"1000-1031"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66640558","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Adam Smith's History of Astronomy Argument: How Broadly Does It Apply? And Where Do Propositions Which «Sooth the Imagination» Come from?","authors":"W. Samuels","doi":"10.1400/86417","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1400/86417","url":null,"abstract":"Smith’s «Essay on Astronomy» argues that we settle for propositions setting minds at rest, especially when truth is unattainable. I suggest that 1. the area of setting minds at rest, through propositions asserting a logical sequence of cause and effect (or otherwise) lets people feel that they are not victims of unexplained forces, is extraordinarily wide-ranging; and 2. the sources of such propositions are found in the system of social belief including the mythic system of society, social control as social construction of reality, and the struggle over the structure of power and over the State.","PeriodicalId":38602,"journal":{"name":"History of Economic Ideas","volume":"30 1","pages":"1000-1026"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66639983","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Max Weber's Influence on Schumpeter","authors":"R. Faucci","doi":"10.1400/76921","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1400/76921","url":null,"abstract":"During his whole lifetime, Schumpeter shows a deep concern with Max Weber’s methodological writings. In Schumpeter’s first book, Epochen der Dogmen- und Methodengeschichte (1908), the Weberian concept of Wertfreiheit (freedom from evaluation) allows Schumpeter to stress the non-normative character of economic science. The subsequent Theorie der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung (1912) is also influenced by Weber. The Kreislauf (circular flow) is an Idealtypus (ideal type) in the Weberian sense. Also apparently taken from Weber are the hedonistic or ‘rational’ motives which animate the Kreislauf. In the inter-war period, while the two sociological essays on imperialism still continue to use Weber’s concepts of Idealtypus and rationality in the Weberian sense, Schumpeter’s subsequent reflections on econometrics and above all his Business cycles (1939) show a sort of uncertainty between an empiricist attitude towards research, not in contradiction with Weber, and an ‘historicist’ and idealist approach to economics. In the History of Economic Analysis (1954) Weber’s lesson is definitively dismissed. Instead of defining economic science through the rationality of economic agents, Schumpeter adopts a broad approach that includes economic history among the techniques of economic ‘analysis’, in apparent agreement with the German Historical School. Similarly, Weber’s Wertfreiheit seems to be abandoned, since Schumpeter argues that ‘vision’ interferes to some extent with ‘analysis’, and it is almost impossibile to keep the former distinct from the latter. This interference, however, may lead to the ‘Ricardian vice’, i.e. the false belief that abstract scientific propositions are immediately suitable for resolving practical problems. This approach, by which economic science is annihilated and turned into political action, was mainly followed by John Maynard Keynes.","PeriodicalId":38602,"journal":{"name":"History of Economic Ideas","volume":"15 1","pages":"111-133"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66638737","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Julio Senador and the Spreading of Georgism in Spain: Towards the Single Tax Using Regeneration Rhetoric","authors":"J. R. Gorostiza, L. Jiménez","doi":"10.1400/91015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1400/91015","url":null,"abstract":"Julio Senador Gomez (1872-1962) was an important member of the Spanish Georgist movement between 1917 and the Civil War and also probably its most influential public spokesman, after becoming a well-known publicist in Spain during the first third of the twentieth century. However, Senador’s popularizing of Henry George’s ideas was limited and incomplete. Firstly, and like many other Georgists, Senador – who had a little economic education – focused essentially on the practical remedy of a single tax, completely overlooking any analytical foundation to justify it in Progress and Poverty nor attempting to provide theoretical debate or development. Secondly, his impassioned Regenerationist rhetoric and excessive style, together with his chaotic way of presenting his arguments, tended to obscure – and even often radically distort – his reformist proposals based on George’s theories which, in reality, were quite moderate and far from orthodox socialism. Finally, Senador’s Georgist approach did not evolve: he completely ignored the severe criticism of Georgism by Spanish economists and did not pay enough attention to the changes that had taken place in the Spanish economy from the end of the Restoration period until the Second Republic. As a result, his discourse became reiterative. Today, the most valued contributions of Senador’s work are precisely those that are not related to his Georgist facet.","PeriodicalId":38602,"journal":{"name":"History of Economic Ideas","volume":"15 1","pages":"1000-1025"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66640570","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Kahn-Hicks' Criticism of the Independence of Prices in Keynes' «Treatise on Money»","authors":"Alexander Tobón","doi":"10.1400/54093","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1400/54093","url":null,"abstract":"Keynes formulated the idea that consumer goods prices are independent of prices for new investment goods. This notion was rejected by Kahn, who felt that an independence of this sort stems from certain highly specific hypotheses. Unfortunately, after corresponding with Kahn, Keynes ended up by accepting this criticism. A few years later, Hicks resurrected Kahn's viewpoint when commenting upon the Treatise. The purpose of the present text is to demonstrate that Kahn-Hicks's criticism is incompatible with the central message of the Treatise, since it implies an equality between investment and savings, asserting their identicalness, whereas for Keynes this equality is a condition of monetary equilibrium.","PeriodicalId":38602,"journal":{"name":"History of Economic Ideas","volume":"14 1","pages":"113-122"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66631132","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Economic Agents, Rationality and the Institutional Setup: The Advent of «homo oeconomicus» in the Representations of the Levant","authors":"Eyüp Özveren","doi":"10.1400/77644","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1400/77644","url":null,"abstract":"Shortly after its emergence in the nineteenth century, homo oeconomicus was deployed as a yardstick to measure individual economic behaviour irrespective of temporal and spatial differences. With the European penetration into the Levant, the concept was applied to the evaluation of the economic behaviour of locals. This led to the implicit conception of homo levanticus as the opposite of homo oeconomicus. This paper dwells upon primary sources and travelogues to make this point and then shifts the primacy from agents and their rationality to the institutional setup, in conformity with the historical and institutional critiques of economic orthodoxy.","PeriodicalId":38602,"journal":{"name":"History of Economic Ideas","volume":"14 1","pages":"9-34"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66638459","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Paretian Theory of Ophelimity in Closed and Open Cycles.","authors":"Aldo Montesano","doi":"10.1400/77647","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1400/77647","url":null,"abstract":"The theory of ophelimity in closed and open cycles proposed by Pareto following Volterra’s observations is examined. Although these were oriented towards identification of the integrability conditions, Pareto shows no interest in them, but in the problem of the measurement of the elementary ophelimities (i.e. of the marginal utilities) starting from the empirical data (of an ideal experiment) represented by the marginal rates of substitution and by the indifference varieties. Pareto examines both the case in which the integrability conditions are satisfied (closed cycle) and that in which they are not satisfied (open cycle) and introduces in both cases some identification conditions for the elementary ophelimities (i.e. conditions sufficient for their measurability starting from the empirical data). These conditions are commented upon and generalised.","PeriodicalId":38602,"journal":{"name":"History of Economic Ideas","volume":"14 1","pages":"77-100"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66638519","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tendency to Equilibrium, the Possibility of Crisis, and the History of Business Cycle Theories","authors":"D. Besomi","doi":"10.1400/57565","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1400/57565","url":null,"abstract":"In 1926 Adolf Lowe suggested that business cycle theories are fundamentally incompatible with the idea that the system tends towards equilibrium. Hayek, his disagreement with such a conclusion notwithstanding, recognised that the issue is central to business cycle theorizing, and agreed with Lowe that the proper way to classify business cycle theories is to examine how writers stand on this point. This paper is a preliminary attempt to take Hayek and Lowe seriously on this historiographical issue. After Lowe’s and Hayek’s positions are examined in context, the paper shows that Lowe’s problem had been, implicitly or explicitly, at the heart of theoretical treatment since the early debates on crises. Next, the paper discusses how some crises and cycle theorists gradually switched from considering a stationary equilibrium as a theoretical norm to the idea of cyclical fluctuations as the natural state of the system, while others continued to focus on a stable equilibrium and explained movement as the result of exogenous events, frictions or mismanagements. Finally, the merits of Lowe’s and Hayek’s suggestions are examined in light of this dichotomy.","PeriodicalId":38602,"journal":{"name":"History of Economic Ideas","volume":"14 1","pages":"53-104"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66632275","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Why Innovations have to Overcome Routine","authors":"P. Kesting","doi":"10.1400/76923","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1400/76923","url":null,"abstract":"This paper argues why it is useful to build a theory of entrepreneurship based on a concept of routine. In particular, this paper offers two reasons : First, routine theory provides a convincing decision theoretic foundation for entrepreneurship and its dichotomous distinction from « ordinary production ». Second, in contrast to traditional decision theory, routine theory is capable of producing the main characteristics that Schumpeter as well as many evolutionary economists have assigned to entrepreneurship, such as path dependencies, ignorance and learning, and the meaning of personality traits like leadership potential for entrepreneurship.","PeriodicalId":38602,"journal":{"name":"History of Economic Ideas","volume":"15 1","pages":"1000-1020"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66638780","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Paretian Theory of Ophelimity in Closed and Open Cycles. A Commentary","authors":"P. Scapparone","doi":"10.1400/77648","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1400/77648","url":null,"abstract":"In this note we present some observations on the topics developed by Montesano in his paper The Paretian Theory of Ophelimity in Closed and Open Cycles ; furthermore, we give an alternative proof of the Paretian theorem on the measurability of elementary ophelimities.","PeriodicalId":38602,"journal":{"name":"History of Economic Ideas","volume":"14 1","pages":"101-112"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66638528","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}