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on History and Philosophy of Economics |
| By: | Laidler, David |
| Abstract: | The History of Economics Society was founded at a time when the History of Economic Thought was being eliminated from the Economics post-graduate curriculum in many universities, and was one of the key institutions around which the sub-discipline successfully re-organised itself and continued to develop. Laidler (2003), a paper presented at the Society’s 2002 conference, argued that Economics itself, especially Macroeconomics, was suffering serious damage from this expulsion. It has continued to do so since, and the simple passage of time has now made it appropriate for Historians of Economic Thought to study this question. |
| Date: | 2024–02–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:zwh7t&r=hpe |
| By: | DesRoches, C. Tyler |
| Abstract: | Review of “A History of Ecological Economic Thought” by Marco P. Vianna Franco and Antoine Missemer. |
| Date: | 2024–01–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:ruasz&r=hpe |
| By: | Marcuzzo, Maria Cristina; Zacchia, Giulia |
| Abstract: | On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the formal establishment of the History of Economics Society (HES), we have analyzed the published HES presidential addresses in order to describe what views of the history of economic thought (HET) were provided, what strengths were identified, and what possibilities for growth or limitations in its future development. We propose a rereading of the published HES presidential addresses as food for thought of scope, method, and future development of HET. |
| Date: | 2024–02–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:wt9rp&r=hpe |
| By: | Cruz-e-Silva, Victor; Almeida, Felipe |
| Abstract: | In 1901, Correa Moylan Walsh gained renown for writing a groundbreaking monograph on index numbers. His contributions to monetary economics, however, though neglected, transcend his work on index numbers, which was conceived to serve more foundational concerns of his. Therefore, our aim is twofold. First, we want to recover Walsh’s role as an important early twentieth-century economist. Second, we intend to provide a wider account of his incursion into monetary economics. Our argument is that the cornerstone of Walsh’s approach to the science of money is not confined to index numbers, but concerns his distinction between different kinds of economic value and the discussion regarding the kind of value that money should measure and store. As such, we identify Walsh’s 1903 book, The Fundamental Problem in Monetary Science, as his archetypical work. |
| Date: | 2024–01–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:4yxbp&r=hpe |
| By: | Barbieri, Fabio; Filho, Marcelo Lourenço |
| Abstract: | This article explores a debate on the theory of cost that occurred in the 1890s between economist Silas MacVane and Austrian economists. MacVane defended the idea of objective “real cost, ” while the Austrians argued for subjective opportunity cost. Although this debate is rarely mentioned, it represents a noteworthy episode of active contrast between ideas on value and cost, with implications that are relevant for contemporary economists. By highlighting the incompatibility of the objective and subjective conceptions of cost, this debate sheds light on the evolution of economic theory. The contributions of relatively unknown authors, such as MacVane and David Green, are also discussed. We interpret the debate in terms of the contrast between research programs based on wealth or exchange, and note that the gradual shift in the period regarding the fundamental problem that informs economic theory is key to understanding the modern concept of cost. |
| Date: | 2024–01–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:gshwz&r=hpe |
| By: | Fiorito, Luca; Erasmo, Valentina |
| Abstract: | Largely forgotten today, Albert Galloway Keller was one of the foremost sociologists of his time. A brilliant scholar and a staunch disciple of William Graham Sumner, Keller spent his entire academic career at Yale, first as a student and then as Professor of the Science of Society, the chair formerly held by his mentor. The main coordinates of Keller’s sociology are to be found in his major work, Societal Evolution (1915), where he sought to apply Charles Darwin’s mechanism of variation, selection, and transmission to Sumner’s general scheme. Although Keller gave priority to social variables, his evolutionary sociology retained many elements of the typically Progressive Era preoccupations with heredity and the biological quality of individuals. The aim of this paper is to examine in some detail Keller’s views on eugenics and related issues, and to assess whether and to what extent these biologically deterministic elements played a role in his Darwinian approach to institutional change. |
| Date: | 2024–02–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:58qzy&r=hpe |
| By: | Ghislain Deleplace (LED - Laboratoire d'Economie Dionysien - UP8 - Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis) |
| Abstract: | The relationship between Tooke and Ricardo on money is not obvious. The comfortable intuition is that, since Tooke opposed the Currency School, and since the Currency School assumed Ricardo's heritage, Tooke was anti-Ricardian. However, there are at least two reasons not to follow this intuition. One is that the continuity between Ricardo's monetary theory and the Currency School may be seriously questioned. The second reason is that Tooke as the main figure of the Banking School in the 1840s was substantially different from the early Tooke who wrote in the 1820s. To avoid misapprehension of the relationship between Tooke and Ricardo on money, it may thus be useful to compare their respective positions on a subject on which both of them spoke and wrote: the suspension and the resumption of convertibility. After having been suspended since 1797, the convertibility of the Bank of England note was resumed on 1st February 1820, following Peel's Bill adopted the preceding year. A major change was introduced by comparison with the pre-1797 system: convertibility was to be into bullion and not into coin. In his 1816 pamphlet Proposals for an Economical and Secure Currency this scheme had been advocated by Ricardo as a permanent device, which amounted to eliminate metallic currency. By contrast, Peel's Bill made it temporary, for a period of three years. In the end, this experiment was discontinued after a little more than one year: on 1st May 1821 the old system of cash payments was resumed. Tooke had been examined on 22nd March 1819 by the Lords' Committee on Resumption. He supported then Ricardo's plan but only as a temporary measure, until it would be possible to return to cash payments. In 1826 he published a pamphlet which contained a whole section devoted to a critique of convertibility into bullion as a permanent system, and in 1829 he published another pamphlet in which he showed that Peel's Bill had had no effect on the deflation and the stagnation of trade which had occurred in the subsequent years – a view consistent with Ricardo's one – and that the Bank of England could not either be considered as responsible for this situation – contrary to what Ricardo contended. It thus makes sense to reconstruct a post mortem dialogue between Ricardo (who had died in 1823) and Tooke on the effects of the suspension and the resumption of convertibility. |
| Keywords: | David Ricardo, Thomas Tooke, convertibility, monetary theory |
| Date: | 2023–06–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04429520&r=hpe |
| By: | Kolev, Stefan |
| Abstract: | This paper embeds the early political economy of F. A. Hayek in the intellectual milieu of German ordoliberalism. The urgency during the 1930s and 1940s to stabilize the disintegrating societal orders is identified as a crucial driver behind the parallelisms between Hayek and the ordoliberals. Their shared theoretical position is that in such moments, liberty can thrive sustainably only after a framework of general and stable rules has been established. Hayek’s proximity to ordoliberalism was most explicitly discernible in The Road to Serfdom and at the founding meeting of the Mont Pèlerin Society in 1947, culminating in the shared politico-economic vision of the competitive order. The contextual nature of Hayek’s ordoliberalism surfaced in the years after The Constitution of Liberty when his focus shifted, along with the postwar intellectual and institutional stabilization of the West: from how stable orders enable liberty to how liberty enables the evolution of orders. |
| Date: | 2024–01–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:8nhr5&r=hpe |
| By: | Demeulemeester, Samuel |
| Abstract: | This paper aims to show how the 100% money proposal, which Irving Fisher came to support in 1935, connects to the rest of his work on monetary instability—in particular, to his credit cycle analysis of 1911, and his debt-deflation theory of 1932-33. Behind these respective analyses, we identify a common explanatory pattern of monetary fluctuations, the “debt-money-prices” triangle, which we use to show how Fisher’s explanations evolved over time, and how his advocacy of 100% money came as a logical conclusion. |
| Date: | 2024–01–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:tfm6v&r=hpe |
| By: | Medema, Steven G |
| Abstract: | Though the Chicago school has been the subject of no small amount of research over the past several decades, that scholarship has focused largely on persons, ideas, and influence—in short, on the school itself. No attention has been paid to the origins of that label and the avenues via which the notion of a ‘Chicago school’ of economics came to be. This paper attempts to address that lacuna, drawing on both published and archival resources. What emerges is a story of a label of uncertain origin but wrapped up in competing agendas, the first stage in the history of which culminates in 1962 with its rejection by two of the very people who helped birth it. |
| Date: | 2024–01–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:cbq8a&r=hpe |
| By: | Hagemann, Harald |
| Abstract: | The essay reflects the experience of the author in participating in HES activities over 37 of its 50 years. The main focus is on scholars who emigrated to the USA in the period of totalitarian regimes in Europe and the influence they exerted in the USA. It is emphasized that many émigrés developed “aerial roots” (Streeten), i.e., they became citizens of the world and thereby carriers of the process of internationalization after World War II. This cosmopolitan spirit also permeated the HES from the beginning when many émigré scholars were still active. It also contributed to the formation of an international network of scholars and societies in the history of economic thought which is flourishing today. |
| Date: | 2024–02–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:c5v97&r=hpe |
| By: | Grudev, Lachezar |
| Abstract: | Review of “Hayek: A Life, 1899–1950” by Bruce Caldwell and Hansjoerg Klausinger. |
| Date: | 2024–01–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:2j3vg&r=hpe |
| By: | Januard, Pierre |
| Abstract: | The Latin terms commonly used to signify ‘risk’ are absent from Thomas Aquinas’s economic writings. Instead, Aquinas offers a lexicon of probability, prudence and danger. This ternary lexicon brings with it a triple universalisation of risk: first, a universalisation through activity, including the activity of analysis considered as part of economic activity; second, a universalisation through the agents, since everyone – the observer, the co-contractors, the prince and the population – is affected by the risk; and, finally, a partial universalisation of its definition, since the lexicon indicates a risk which is not yet restricted by calculation, as the modern notion is, although some distinctions are already made by Aquinas. However, the lexicon only describes a risk of loss and does not take into account chance of gain. |
| Date: | 2024–01–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:n7j9t&r=hpe |
| By: | Charles, Loïc |
| Abstract: | In the 1990s, history of economics was comprised of a number of national communities. Among the latter the North American community held a dominant position and was quite different from its continental European counterparts. The HES had no counterpart in continental Europe, where national societies were small and recent. While the History of economics society was open to methodological pluralism, European societies were not. Over the past two decades, the growing domination of the continental European community has created a new context in which the identity of the North American community in general and that of the HES in particular has become uncertain. The consequence had been that methodological diversity within the subdiscipline has diminished. We conclude by two suggestions to counter this trend. |
| Date: | 2024–02–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:782za&r=hpe |
| By: | Michele Bee (Cedeplar/UFMG); Luiz Felipe Bruzzi Curi (Cedeplar/UFMG) |
| Abstract: | This article shows that Adam Smith is the precursor of neither the orthodox nor the heterodox view of money, as has been doubly argued. According to him, money arose neither as a medium of exchange introduced to overcome the difficulties of barter, as in the orthodox view, nor as a unit of account established by the state, as in the heterodox view. On the contrary, as this article shows, for him money arises from that agreement on the valuation of mutual services that originally takes place in exchange. Money, thus, emerges spontaneously in exchange, but, contrary to the orthodox view, it emerges primarily as a measure of value. At the same time, if the state can intervene to guarantee the universality of a means of payment to settle claims and debts, for Smith this is only the fruit of the historical process and not its beginning, as in the heterodox view. |
| Keywords: | Adam Smith; chartalism; money; agreement; self-esteem. |
| JEL: | B10 B12 B31 D46 E40 Z13 |
| Date: | 2024–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdp:texdis:td666&r=hpe |
| By: | Berdell, John; Menudo, José M. |
| Abstract: | Standard models of the price specie flow do not consider credit. Yet Hume and preceding authors were reacting to the implosion of Law’s financial bubble. We delineate the anti-credit thesis contained within the evolution of eighteenth century balance of payments analyses. A string of eighteenth century authors argued over whether the balance of payments constituted a binding constraint on credit creation. As part of their analysis they considered how changes in the money supply might alter output, prices, employment, capital, and population. How new money entered the economy was often critical. We start with Law and then consider Melon, Gervaise, Vanderlint, Cantillon, Montesquieu, Hume, Steuart, Forbonnais, and Smith. In closing we pay particular attention to the idea that Hume and Smith effectively displaced preceding, often ‘mercantilist’, analyses of credit and the balance of payments. |
| Date: | 2024–02–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:apbkm&r=hpe |
| By: | Cruz-e-Silva, Victor |
| Abstract: | The early decades of the twentieth century witnessed a far-reaching growth in empirical exercises designed to measure the cost of living. Brazil was no exception to this movement, and the first studies of this nature for that country surfaced between 1935 and 1939. Among these, three deserve special attention for the soundness of their construction. These are the exercises of Horace Davis, Samuel Lowrie, and Bruno Rudolfer, professors of the Free School of Sociology and Politics of São Paulo, which investigated the cost of living in connection with the pursuit of a proper minimum wage in Brazil. The aim of this article is to revisit their pioneering efforts to measure the cost of living and to indicate how these studies touched upon the search for a minimum wage in Brazil. |
| Date: | 2024–02–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:gz2wp&r=hpe |
| By: | Ghislain Deleplace (LED - Laboratoire d'Economie Dionysien - UP8 - Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis) |
| Abstract: | The main monetary issue in Britain during the early 19th-century war with France was about prolonging the suspension of the convertibility of the Bank of England note, which had been decided in 1797. Amidst a difficult return to a peacetime economy it would also be the main issue in the post-war period, since it would take six years after Waterloo before the pre-war monetary situation was re-enacted. During more than two decades, Lord Grenville's views on the monetary system did not change. They were mostly centred on two aspects. First, the suspension of cash payments of its notes by the Bank of England was a calamity: justified at the outset as a temporary measure of necessity, it should not be prolonged year after year, even in time of war. Second, the substitution of country banks' notes for coins which had taken place all over England outside the London area was a threat to economic and social stability. These unflagging views did not prevent Grenville from advocating gradualism in what was to be implemented in order to return to a sound monetary system – that is, one endowed with a metallic standard thanks to the convertibility of the Bank of England note into coin and to the pre-eminence of specie in the country circulation. This mixture of monetary orthodoxy and gradualism led Grenville in 1819 to support Ricardo's novel plan for convertibility into bullion, provided it was understood as a temporary scheme aiming at facilitating the resumption of convertibility into coin. It also led him in the 1820s to resist the pressures in favour of the return to a double standard (gold and silver). Based on Grenville's speeches in Parliament and on private correspondence, the present paper is a contribution to the special session "Money, Finance and Trade at War. The case of early nineteenth-century Britain". |
| Keywords: | Lord Grenville, Bank of England note, convertibility, monetary system |
| Date: | 2023–06–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04429551&r=hpe |
| By: | Marcuzzo, Maria Cristina; Sanfilippo, Eleonora |
| Abstract: | The literature on Keynes’s activity as an investor has substantially grown in the last decade (e.g. Chambers and Dimson 2013; Accominotti and Chambers 2016; Chambers and Kabiri 2016; Cristiano, Marcuzzo and Sanfilippo 2018; Marcuzzo and Rosselli 2018; Marcuzzo and Sanfilippo 2016; [2020]2022). The contribution of the present paper is to investigate a specific feature of Keynes’s investment activity on his own account: his preference for American rather than British Investment Trusts. While this feature has also been observed in his investments on behalf of King’s College (Chambers and Kabiri 2016), we focus here on his personal portfolio, and we also provide a set of possible explanations for his preference. We maintain that some reasons have to do with the different structure and characteristics of the Investment Trusts in the two countries. Others relate more closely to the kind of investment policy typically adopted by the American Investment Trusts, which was much more in line with Keynes’s own approach to investment - especially as far as the stocks selection is concerned. Finally, we also attribute a role to his epistemological approach, i.e. the view that, although a full and perfect knowledge is not reachable by individuals due to the radical uncertainty characterizing the environment (“we simply don’t know”, Keynes 1937) and to the limitations of the human mind, reliable information remains, however, a guide for rational decision-making, also in financial markets. Following this approach, as we will show, Keynes preferred to delegate his investment choices in the US stock market to those professionals - the managers of the Investment Trusts - who possessed, in his opinion, the wider set of reliable information on that market, while keeping for himself the investment choices in the UK stock market. |
| Date: | 2024–02–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:gtre7&r=hpe |
| By: | Maes, Ivo; Pasotti, Ilaria |
| Abstract: | Especially with the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998, Asian countries have advocated a profound reform of the international financial architecture. Their proposals focused on two main axes: a reform of the global financial system and stronger regional monetary integration in Asia. There are here significant parallels with the ideas of Robert Triffin (1911-1993). Triffin became famous with trenchant analyses of the vulnerabilities of the international monetary system. Also now, the Triffin dilemma is still present among international monetary policymakers, also in Asia. Triffin put forward several proposals for reforming the global monetary system, but he also developed proposals for regional monetary integration. These were very much based on his experience with the European Payments Union, and focused on the creation of a (European) Reserve Fund and a (European) currency unit. In this paper we focus on Triffin’s proposals for an Asian payments union in the late 1960s, giving special attention to Japan (in Triffin’s time the biggest Asian economy, moreover Triffin had an important Japanese network). |
| Date: | 2024–01–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:8xgtv&r=hpe |
| By: | Mehrling, Perry |
| Abstract: | Review of “Debates in Macroeconomics from the Great Depression to the Long Recession: Cycles, Crises and Policy Responses” by Arie Arnon. |
| Date: | 2024–01–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:afp5j&r=hpe |
| By: | Simone Pellegrino (Department of Economics and Statistics (Dipartimento di Scienze Economico-Sociali e Matematico-Statistiche), University of Torino, Italy) |
| Abstract: | This essay retraces the historical steps and analyses the theoretical motivation that influenced the definition of the Gini index G and its application today. In particular, it tries to link together the ‘purely statistical’ approach and the ‘contextual’ approach, related not only to the statistical methods discovered in the Gini’s period but also to the succession of these discoveries. Having discussed the ‘contextual’ approach of these events, the remainder of the essay focuses on the ‘purely statistical’ approach, by presenting the statistical methods discovered by Corrado Gini and Gaetano Pietra as they chronologically appear in the years 1912, 1914 and 1915. The concept of mean difference, proposed by Corrado Gini in 1912 for applications in statistics and economics, is discussed. Then the difference between the concentration ratio R Gini advanced in 1914 and the Gini index G, as it is usually used today, is highlighted in light of its geometrical interpretation with the Lorenz piecewise linear function proposed by Gaetano Pietra in 1915. |
| Keywords: | Gini Coefficient, Lorenz Curve |
| JEL: | D63 |
| Date: | 2024–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tur:wpapnw:086&r=hpe |
| By: | Bylund, Emma (Monetary Policy Department, Central Bank of Sweden); Iversen, Jens (Monetary Policy Department, Central Bank of Sweden); Vredin, Anders (Monetary Policy Department, Central Bank of Sweden) |
| Abstract: | This paper discusses how monetary policy in Sweden has evolved since 1973. We provide a chronology of the different monetary policy regimes in place during the past fifty years and identify two main regimes, the pegged-but-adjustable exchange rate regime (1973 – 1992) and the inflation targeting regime (1993 – 2022). Inflation in Sweden has been more stable under the inflation targeting regime than under both the Bretton Woods system, and the pegged-but-adjustable exchange rate regime. GDP growth was higher and more stable during the Bretton Woods System. We argue that inflation targeting was implemented according to the simple text book version only during a short period, 1999-2007. We illustrate that economic developments in Sweden have in many respects been similar to that of Denmark. Lastly, we identify and discuss recurrent themes in the discussions of monetary policy under inflation targeting. |
| Keywords: | monetary policy; inflation targeting; exchange rate regimes |
| JEL: | E42 E52 E58 E65 |
| Date: | 2023–11–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:rbnkwp:0429&r=hpe |