Exploring knowledge in monetary policy process stands to benefit by departing from conceptualizing knowledge as an objective depiction of reality, a neutral language of science underpinning technocratic policy-making. This paper proposes a postpositivist perspective, approaching knowledge...

Bruce Caldwell argues that Hayek eventually favoured an evolutionary response, and he endorses this recommendation. I am increasingly inclined to agree, although I believe that the concept of evolution needs to be handled with some care. Hayek himself was cautious, not least in The Sensory...

‘E-commerce’ is conventionally understood to refer to a discrete set of Internet-related business practices, with discussions focused on their potential to improve the efficiency and reach of business. However, there is evidence that in practice, the term ‘e-commerce’ is applied to a...

Bowles and Gintis have, over the last twenty-five years, contributed to a Post Walrasian approach to economics drawing upon this in making policy recommendations concerning institutional design and the distribution of productive resources in society. We establish that Post Walrasian Economics is...

Ecological questions have proven particularly fruitful to illustrate Luhmann's theory of society as an integrative perspective cutting across the scientific, economic, legal, and political domains. In this paper, we will discuss the development of carbon trading as a case study of how reflexive...

The premise on which this paper builds is that modern economists unduly neglect history. The paper aims to support the argument that this is undesirable by looking at past episodes in the development of economic thought where economics has benefited from a historical approach. The first example...

This paper wants to answer the following question: can economics contribute to a morally decent life? Economics as a science originates from modern moral philosophy. This discipline analyses human nature and its consequences for the way in which social order is maintained. But as economics...

The purpose of this paper is to consider why Scottish Enlightenment thought should have generated a particular theory of economic development. Ideas about economic development in the Scottish Enlightenment period involve a certain circularity. One of the key arguments was that economic...

With the increasing attention to how monetary policy is communicated has come a focus on the scope for diverse messages to arise from the committee making the decisions. While the existing literature sees the source of such diversity in relation to a 'correct' decision based on one 'true' model,...

The purpose of the paper is to consider Adam Smith's ideas on rhetoric in relation to his philosophy and his economics, against the background of the Scottish Enlightenment. For Smith, communication was important partly as a vehicle for persuasion in the absence of scope for argument by...