Harriet Taylor has been long forgotten as an economist and political philosopher, while merely remembered as John Stuart Mill’s friend and belatedly wife. Never was fate more unjust: we only need to recall that Taylor - whose liberal background soon led her to be fascinated by socialist...

Giacinto Dragonetti è l’autore di un piccolo libro, Delle virtù e de’ premi (1766) che associato al più celebre Dei delitti e delle pene (1764) di Cesare Beccaria, ebbe un significa- tivo successo nell’Europa dei lumi pre-rivoluzionaria. Il libro è costruito attorno all’idea che alle...

Classical economists - mainly Smith, Ricardo and J.S. Mill - abhorred public debts because of their interference with capital accumulation. J.S. Mill in particular envisaged that a rising public debt leads to higher interest rates and falling real wages, a combination which may be consistent...

The introduction of new technology may have significant effects on the level of employment and the real wage rate; effects that have received considerable attention even from the economic thinkers of the classical period. This paper aims to analyze and evaluate the various views and arguments of...

The mainstream classical theory of interest was part of the theory of profit as I have shown (Gootzeit 2006). The clearer separation of interest from profit took place gradually during the 19th century and even into the 20th. Turgot’s early role in this process has not been recognized. His...

In his work Arbeit und Boden (Labor and Land) (1889) Otto Effertz outlined the foundations of a "Ponophysiocracy". This book which in its final, strongly modified version Les Antagonismes économiques was published in 1906, had a stronger impact on Adolphe Landry, who praises as well as...

This paper documents Richard Kahn’s role as an unofficial advisor to the Israeli Government, using archival and published sources. In 1957, Kahn predicted that the European Economic Community (EEC) customs union would harm Israel’s trade and that the EEC would reject Israel’s application...

Antonio Serra wrote in 1613 an outstanding analysis, on the economy of the Reign of Naples, which is still very little known out of Italy; where he is largely recognized as the founder of the "Southern question". This article proposes a larger view of Serra’s pioneering achievements, by...

Few economists choose to write memoirs, and of those who do most adopt the "logic of my contributions£ approach. Tibor Scitovsky, Hungarian-born theorist who spent most of his career at Stanford and Berkeley, instead left us unpublished recollections, many of his childhood, others bearing on...

This paper considers the question of what influence J.M. Keynes had on the evolution of the welfare state after the Second World War. First it weighs whether his non-utilitarian approach to economic theory and welfare measurement had an impact on the growth of the welfare state. Then it...