The social encyclical Rerum Novarum closely links the question of poverty with that of property, and invokes Thomas Aquinas. But on closer examination, the reasoning developed in favour of property departs from the scholastic thinker, since it maintains more affinities with the liberal tradition...

The Italian economist Enrico Barone (1859- 1924) is best known for his contributions to marginal productivity theory and the socialist planning debate. This paper analyzes Barone’s contributions to the theory of perfect competition which are largely ignored in the secondary literature. It...

The Austrian economist Othmar Spann (1878-1950) proposes term "universalism" to qualify, in opposition to the "individualism", the doctrine and the method consisting in putting in first totality, society, in the logical order of "functional" analysis of economic facts. Spann applies then this...