The paper presents the history of the contribution of two American economists to a radical cause: the establishment of a socialist and politically united Africa. The setting is 1960s Ghana which under Kwame Nkrumah, the man who led the country to independence from British colonial rule, emerged...

Joan Robinson's infatuation with Mao's China remains the most controversial episode of the Cambridge economist's life. Drawing on the literatures on observation in science and economics, and economists' travels, we aim at overcoming the dichotomy between Robinson as a 'political pilgrim' and as...

Austrian economist Ludwig Mises's central role in the socialist calculation debates has been consensually acknowledged since the early 1920s. Yet, only recently, Nemeth, O'Neill, Uebel, and others have drawn particular attention to Mises's pertinent encounter with one of the most colorful...

The paper discusses Evsey Domar's role as a link between economics in the West and in Russia. The Russian heritage he brought with him from Harbin (Manchuria) to the US consisted of an interest in socialism and Russian history. He paid close attention to the 1947 Varga controversy in the USSR....

Early in the 18th century, before the birth of political economy as a discipline, two of the earliest novels in the English language were published: Robinson Crusoe (1719) by writer and economic entrepreneur Daniel Defoe, and Gulliver’s Travels (1726) by the cleric and political adviser...

The interest-rate controversies between Böhm-Bawerk and Fisher have attracted little attention and, in the opinion of most commentators, justifiably so. Böhm-Bawerk and Fisher argue over what appear to be two minor issues – Böhm-Bawerk's claims that his third cause of interest (productivity...

The aim of this paper is to explain the process of diversification of normative economics by presenting the work of two authors: Tibor Scitovsky [1910-2002] and Amartya Sen [1933-]. While these two authors first contributed to traditional welfare analysis from within, they were subsequently...

The Pigou effect was conceived to counter Keynes's argument that a competitive economy could remain in the state of high unemployment. Before he introduced this idea, Pigou had debated with Keynes the same question of whether an economy has the tendency to recover full employment. He lost in...

Modern growth theory derives mostly from Robert Solow's "A Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth" (1956). Solow's own interpretation locates the origins of his "Contribution" in his view that the growth model of Roy Harrod implied a tendency toward progressive collapse of the economy. He...

In the paper I offer some vignettes on my relationship, both professional and personal, with Mark Blaug, and by way of example reflect on his impact on the history of economics.