Standard economics starts with behavioral assumptions that are formally expressed as axioms. This approach met with little scientific success but still enjoys some popularity for lack of a convincing alternative. To replace the subjective formal foundations by objective structural axioms is the...

This contribution to the Festschrift in memoriam of Karl Brandt and Alfred E. Ott establishes the axiomatic unity of circuit, money, price and distribution theory. From the history of economic methodology and from actual practice follows: one cannot not axiomatize. The crucial question is not...

We examine econometric and elementary economic theory issues arising from the model specification in Henderson, Storeygard and Weil (2012), that uses night light data to proxy for missing or unreliable GDP growth data. An alternative approach based on the expenditure function is outlined. It can...

Agglomeration can be caused by asymmetric information and a locational signaling effect: The location choice of workers signals their productivity to potential employers. The cost of a signal is the cost of housing at that location. When workers' marginal willingness to pay for housing is...

The representative economist does not understand the two most important phenomena in the economic universe: profit and income. Because of this economists have nothing to offer in the way of a scientifically founded advice. Therefore, the contributions to economic blogs cannot claim to offer more...

The classical case of comparative advantage is put into a new formal framework, that is, the behavioral axioms of standard economics are replaced by a set of structural axioms. This enables a comprehensive analysis that takes the effects on income and profit explicitly into account. The axioms...

We examine spatial econometric issues arising from the model specification in Henderson, Storeygard and Weil (2012), that uses night light data to proxy for missing or unreliable GDP growth data.

It is common knowledge that neither Walrasians nor Keynesians nor Marxians nor Institutionialists nor Austrians nor Sraffaians came to grips with profit. The reason is a defective formal basis. In the present paper the formal foundations are first renewed. When the profit theory is false the...

It is clear by now that pure exchange models are useless. For two reasons. First, because exchange is the other side of specialization in production, and, second, because a direct exchange of goods does not take place in the monetary economy. The decisive drawback of conventional exchange...

This paper demonstrates that a pollution tax with a fixed cost component may lead, by itself, to stratification between clean and dirty firms without heterogeneous preferences or increasing returns. We construct a simple model with two locations and two industries (clean and dirty) where...