This paper analyses and explicates the explanatory characteristics of Schelling's checkerboard model of segregation. It argues that the explanation of emergence of segregation which is based on the checkerboard model is a partial potential (theoretical) explanation. Yet it is also argued that...

In fall 1935, Abraham Wald presented an existence proof for a general equilibrium of exchange model to Karl Menger's Mathematical Colloquium in Vienna. Due to limited space, the paper could not be printed in the eighth proceedings of the Colloquium (the Ergebnisse) published in spring 1937 but...

In this review essay of Medema's and Waterman's collection of some of Samuelson's writings in the history of economics, the author argues that Samuelson's claim to have written “Whig History” is spurious. Moreover the author argues that Samuelson's own writings on modern economics are,...

Paul Samuelson is probably the most important economist of the second half of the twentieth century. His research publications; his introductory textbook; his articles on topical questions of economic policy; and his interactions with numerous students, colleagues, policy makers, and the wider...

Trevor Swan independently developed the neoclassical growth model. Swan (1956) was published ten months later than Solow (1956), but included a more complete analysis of technical progress, which Solow treated separately in Solow (1957). Reference is sometimes made to the "Solow-Swan growth...

An unfailing element in the Italian tradition of economics is a deep concern with its past. However, motivations have been different through time. Neoclassical economists, such as Pantaleoni and Einaudi, approached the past in order to demonstrate the eternity of the "economic dogma". This...

The paper considers three methods for eliminating the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates and thus for restoring symmetry to domain over which the central bank can vary its policy rate. They are: (1) abolishing currency (which would also be a useful crime-fighting measure); (2) paying...

The extension of economics to topics that lie outside its classical domain is known as ‘economic imperialism’. But there are territories of social science that persist to be largely intractable using the postulates of economic theory: the anthropological subject of primitive societies...

This paper identifies what seem to have been the five main issues in contention in monetary theory, both historically and in the current era, and discusses the view that J.M. Keynes took on each of them in the Treatise on Money and The General Theory. The key issues in monetary theory are the...

In this paper I analyse how I became an economist and at the same time a democratic socialist and a Christian. I also explain how I became politically involved after my graduate studies at Cambridge in the late 1950s and started lecturing at Adelaide. When back in Cambridge in the 1960s,...