This paper revisits old questions of the proper subject and bounds of economics: Does economics study “provisioning”? or markets? or a method of reasoning, self-interested rational optimization? A variety of scholars and others in many fields make use of a taxonomy of society consisting of...

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...

In this paper we first critically review conventional environmental economics. We conclude that the standard theory offers too narrow a perspective for many real world problems and that many theories are not empirically tested. Consequently, environmental economics is at risk of producing...

Nationalekonomiska metoder och modeller tillämpas inom de mest skiftande områden som kriminalitet, barnuppfostran och drogmissbruk. Ett skäl till ämnets framgång är dess användning av matematik. Nationalekonomins formalisering synes dock även ha inneburit insnävade beteendeantaganden...

This paper reports results from an economic experiment where respondents are asked to make choices between risky outcomes for themselves and others. In addition, we elicit information about the respondents’ perception of others risk preferences. We investigate whether subjects’ own risk...

Improvement in soil carbon through conservation agriculture in developing countries may generate some private benefits to farmers as well as sequester carbon emissions, which is a positive externality to society. Leaving crop residue on the farm has become an important option in conservation...