Richard Cantillon and David Hume both propose the theory of monetary nonneutrality, whereby the money supply changes through the money balances of specific individuals. Such an uneven distribution of monetary change then spreads throughout the economy step by step and changes relative prices....

In the 1870s and 1880s, the scientist, logician, and pragmatist philosopher Charles S. Peirce possessed an advanced knowledge of mathematical economics, having mastered and criticized Cournot as early as 1871. In 1884 he engaged in a multi-round debate with the editors of The Nation over the...

Translation of old economic doctrines into new technical frameworks led the profession to lose a valid theory of monetary non-neutrality. The theory relates to how additional money diffuses through the economy after entering at different points. Diffusion takes time, redistributes resources, and...

Samuelson kept optimization-based problems separated from macroeconomic dynamics in his Foundations, where dynamics were defined in terms of difference and differential equations. Despite some criticism of his "correspondence principle" of stability analysis by D.F. Gordon, D. Patinkin and...

The concept of 'the core' originates in cooperative game theory and its introduction to economics in the 1960s as a basis for proofs of existence of general equilibrium is one of the earliest attempts to use game theory to address big questions in economics. Discovery of the core was met with...

The paper investigates the role played by Friedman’s interpretation of the Brazilian inflation in his 1967 formulation of the natural rate hypothesis and in his 1976 discussion of indexation and other institutional arrangements in the face of chronic inflation. It is argued that, as an...

Combining concrete policy-oriented modeling strategies of World War II with what was received as traditional neoclassical theory, in 1956 Robert Solow constructed a simple, clean, and smooth-functioning "design" model that served many different purposes. As a working object it enabled...

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...

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...

The origins of "capital fundamentalism' - the notion that physical capital accumulation is the primary determinant of economic growth - have been often ascribed to H arrod's and Domar's proposition that the rate of growth is the product of the saving rate and of the output-capital ratio. I t is...