Some standard interpretations of Leon Walras' political economy are challenged by a study of his philosophical and political ideas. Walras thought that his general-equilibrium theory was both a normative scheme and pure science. This "Walras paradox" is resolved by an understanding of the...

Karl Marx perhaps the most astute student of economic doctrine, once made the famous and apposite observation that in substantial passages of "The Wealth of Nations" Adam Smith "was very copiously infected with the conceptions of the Physiocrats." In parallel fashion this paper agues that in...

This paper discusses Marshall's conception of a general equilibrium system. It argues that conceptually, Marshallian general equilibrium analysis is at a much higher level than Walrasian general equilibrium analysis, and, because it is, it is far more compatible with modern developments in...

In this paper we compare the classical general equilibrium framework of Smith and Marx with the neoclassical one of Arrow and Debreu, and find that these competing paradigms of equilibrium clash on a number of critical issues--efficiency, power, the role of markets, time, the nature of...

J. B. Say argued that commercial crises were the results of effective demand failures, except, unlike Malthus he did not naively attribute effective demand failures to overproduction given some absolute limit on people's willingness to consume. Instead, Say built a theory of recessions based on...

It is useful from time to time to revisit the pioneers in a field. The richness of their original thought is often diminished as new specialists in a field are educated or, rather, trained. Stylized caricatures and toy models out-compete nuanced multidisciplinary narratives in the competition...

The Reverend Francis Wayland, author of the most widely-read textbook on political economy in pre-Civil War America, was persuaded that higher education should be guided by market principles. Using arguments derived.from classical economics, he diagnosed shortcomings in the U.S. collegiate...

This paper uses Smith's views on the distribution of income and poverty to support the argument that Smith's advocacy of laissez-faire was limited and historically specific. It discusses the relevance of these views in providing philosophical underpinning for modern social policy. Examination of...