In biology, the laws that regulate the structuring and change of complex organisms, characterised by interlocking complementarities, are different from those that shape the evolution of simple organisms. Only the latter share mechanisms of competitive selection of the fittest analogous to those...

First we consider the existence question in Sraffa’s Chapter I dismissed by counting equations and unknowns. A theorem from the theory of Markov processes, applied to distributions not now of probability but of goods to sectors, shows the general existence of non-negative prices satisfying the...

Neoclassical capital-labour substitution correctly understood is unable to prove a tendency toward the full employment of resources because it leaves investment indeterminate if the full employment of labour is not assumed to start with; then Say's Law loses plausibility because of the...

This paper analyses the foundation of utilitarian ethics and theory of probability in the works of Francis Y. Edgeworth. We argue that he pursued an unitary philosophical project, the search for a common epistemological foundation for the social sciences. The common root of the disciplines is...

This paper argues that the acceptance of two recent methodological advances in economics, namely game theory and laboratory experimentation, was affected by the history dependence constraining the formalization of economics. After an early period in which the two methods were coolly received by...

Probability theory has a central role in Edgeworth’s thought; this paper examines the philosophical foundation of the theory. Starting from a frequentist position, Edgeworth introduced some innovations on the definition of primitive probabilities. He distinguished between primitive...

This paper proposes a general interpretation of Edgworth’s thought based on the recognition of a unitary philosophical project in his contributions to ethics, economics, probability and statistics. This project consists in the search for a common epistemological foundation for the social...

The aim of this paper is to investigate in some detail the origins of Knight’s antipositism and to assess the main influences that brought him to a change in methodological perspective after 1921. As importantly, what follows is also an attempt to increase our general understanding of the...

The article discusses M. Allais’ contributions on equilibrium and capital during the 1940s. While in his Traité (1943) Allais formalizes for the first time an intertemporal general equilibrium (IGE) in a finitehorizon economy, he subsequently abandons this notion, and in the Économie (1947)...

Spatial econometrics is a fast-growing field in the series of quantitative disciplines, auxiliaries of economics and related social sciences. Space, friction, interdependence, spatiotemporal components, externalities and many other aspects interact and should be treated adequately in this field....