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 death of welfare economics has been declared several times. One of the reasons cited for these plural obituaries is that Kenneth Arrow's impossibility theorem, as set out in his path-breaking Social Choice and Individual Values in 1951, has shown that the social welfare function - one of the...

Four talks on Keynes in relation to the Bloomsbury Group: I. Maynard Keynes of Bloomsbury (Craufurd Goodwin); II. Keynes as Policy Advisor (E. Roy Weintraub); III. Keynes and Economics (Kevin D. Hoover); IV. Keynes and Hayek (Bruce Caldwell). The talks were delivered as part of roundtable...

Milton Friedman was the leading public proponent for an all-volunteer military. This chapter traces his influence upon the national debate over conscription, which culminated in Friedman's service on the Gates Commission. Friedman's argument relied on economic reasoning and appeal to...

In the paper, Edwin B. Wilson's influence on the rise of mathematical economics in America between the 1920s and 1940s is explored. The focus is laid on showing how on the grounds of his foundational ideas about science Wilson worked at the organizational and educational fronts to modernize...

This paper is an exploration of the genesis of Paul Samuelson's Foundations of Economic Analysis (1947) from the perspective of his commitment to Edwin B. Wilson's mathematics. The paper sheds new lights on Samuelson's Foundations at two levels. First, Wilson's foundational ideas, embodied in...

In the 1950s, Jacques Rueff's references to social order seem pretty clear: it is not a spontaneous phenomena. Although Rueff is generally seen as a liberal economist, this has prompted commentators to see in his approach something more artificial than Hayek's own ideas on social order. Hayek...

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...

A transcription of a 2019 conversation with Duke historian E. Roy Weintraub on his intellectual development over the 1980s from mathematician to economist to historian. The conversation also explored Weintraub's early and continuing attempts to forge new ways to study the history of contemporary...

Richard A. Musgrave (1910-2007) is remembered today as the American economist who established modern foundations for public finance theory in the middle of the twentieth century. His work as a tax expert in developing countries has received little historical scrutiny. Musgrave was the chief...