In this essay, we survey the use of knowledge in economics and argue that knowledge should be treated one way rather than another. In other words, we see our purpose as both positive and normative. First, we want to show how some economists have treated knowledge in their analytical depictions...

We argue that in order to answer the challenges that James Buchanan put to contemporary political economists, a reconstruction of public choice theory building on the work of Buchanan, F.A. Hayek and Vincent Ostrom must take place. Absent such a reconstruction, and the significant challenges...

My contention is that political economy as a value-relevant discipline has a legitimate claim on our intellectual attention only to the degree that it is grounded in the value-neutral logic of economic analysis — an analysis that while it cannot determine ultimate values may nevertheless...

In this introduction sketch the architecture of Mises' economics and political economy. Mises' overarching program is one of examining exchange (economic science) and the institutions within which exchange takes place (political economy). In recent years the economics profession has moved...

Richard Wagner's Mind, Society and Human Action is a brilliant exposition of the implications of pursuing the “open” as opposed to “closed” perspective (what he terms neo-Mengerian orientation in contrast with a neo-Walrasian orientation). The closed model brings tractability, but only...

Our focus in this chapter will be on the methodological role that Stigler played in validating what he regarded as the science of economics that he had inherited from his own teacher, Frank Knight, and how this affected his understanding not only of economic theory but also public policy....

This paper evaluates the contribution of Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit to the development ofeconomic theory in the 20th century. Our argument in this paper is twofold. First, we contend thatthis book embodied what had been the common knowledge of early neoclassical economics priorto WWII....

In 1989, most economists thought the problem of transition was one of allowing prices to float to market clearing levels. After all one of the most observable problems throughout the former socialist economies was the existence of pervasive shortages. Indeed prices did need to be freed up. But...