This essay argues that Adam Smith's thought should be interpreted within the intellectual context of the Scottish enlightenment. It discusses the origins and the specific nature of the enlightenment in Scotland in order to highlight the differences between the social theory of the Scottish...

This paper examines Adam Smith's understanding of the philosophy and science, the motivations that lead us to investigate nature and society, and the proper methods of investigation and exposition. The paper also criticizes those authors that interpret Smith's work as an example of the...

A new comprehension of Adam Smith's writings arose in the last years. These studies emphasized the political and ethical dimensions of his work and its connection with the eighteenth-century context. This article reviews the historical reception of Smith's works and discusses the recent...

We investigate the existence of national styles of political economy and suggest the characteristics and determinants of the German, Austrian, French, and English styles. Some methodological implications for the history economic thought are outlined.

This paper investigates the emergence in the Modernity of an economic discourse intended to be autonomous from moral and political philosophy. The article demonstrates that the existence of economics as separated field of knowledge is recent and its creation related to the appearance of market...

This paper reviews two elaborations on alternatives to capitalism (Roemer, 1994 e Burczak, 2006). The present round of the controversy on socialism, planning vs. market, was triggered by the collapse of the bureaucratic regime in the URSS. One key feature of the present round is the influence of...

One important question that has been discussed in the literature about regional economics is the relevance of local productive networks (clusters) for the regional development. It is possible to find a huge number of case studies that discuss many aspects of this kind of network: cooperation,...

This article evaluates the relationship between scientific and technological production and the degree of human development in Brazil, on a municipal level. The variables used can be divided into seven groups: human development index, urban infrastructure, cultural infrastructure, incentives...

The interaction between firms and universities in Brazil is very weak. The successful “points of interaction” between science and technology are scarce and localized. This paper investigates the historical roots of this pattern of interaction. The hypothesis of this paper suggests this...

The literature on development experiences of local productive systems has paid little attention to the "specificities" of peripheral countries' socio-economic environment in which these systems are embedded. In other words, little attention has been given to the effects of the international...