Adam Smith on language. Like most 18th century scholars, Adam Smith was not restricted to one field. One of his interests, besides economics, was language, which may partly be a consequence of his Scottish origin and the low standing of the Scottish dialect. Smith's Lectures on Rhetoric and...

After Wicksell in 1911 had published the second Swedish edition of his Lectures on Political Economy, a debate began in the Ekonomisk Tidskrift between Wicksell and his opponent Sven Brisman. The controversy was mainly about the concept of capital and the rate of interest, but the circumstances...

The citations of Heckscher (1879-1952) in journals included in the Social Sciences Citation Index and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index do not, of course, give a complete picture of his significance as a scholar and in public debate. For reasons linked to the selection process, there is a...

Alfred Marshall was by no means ignored, but his influence on Swedish economic thought at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century was limited. On the general level,science and culture in Sweden were more dependent on the German-language countries. In a small country like Sweden,...

Denna text handlar om Gunnar Westin Silverstolpe, den förste professorn i nationalekonomi vid Göteborgs Handelshögskola. En kortfattad bakgrund tecknas i form av Göteborgs Högskolas tillkomst 1891 som en kompromiss mellan dem som ville ha en ”Fri Akademi” utan examina och inriktad på...

Abstract: Studies of political favouritism in Africa often treat ethnic and regional favouritism as interchangeable concepts. The present paper distinguishes between the two and investigates their relative influence in Sub-Saharan Africa. Focusing on whether individuals perceive their ethnic...

Common identity and peer punishment have been identified as important means to reduce free riding and to promote cooperation in teamwork settings. This paper examines the relative importance of these two mechanisms, as well as the importance of income distribution in team cooperation. In a...

We explore the effect of income inequality and peer punishment on voluntary provision of public goods in an experimental context. Our sample draws from nine fishing communities in South-Africa where high levels of inequality prevail. We find that aggregate cooperation is higher in both the...

This paper examines the concern for relative standing among rural households in China. We use a survey-experimental method to measure to what extent poor Chinese farmers care about their relative income and find that the respondents care to a high degree. Compared to previous studies in...

This paper seeks to explain within as well as between country variation in preferences for redistribution in terms of self interest concerns, and an input based concept of fairness captured by the effects of beliefs about the causes of income differences. Results of estimations based on data for...