This paper traces the evolution of the concept of capital in economic literature––from the ‘fund’ concept prevalent in pre-classical and classical writings to the stress on ‘physical capital’ in neoclassical literature and finally to ‘human capital’ in endogenous growth theory....

The Siege of Leningrad – one of the most dramatic episodes of the Great Patriotic War. Memory about it lives, but causes an ambiguous assessment

We extend the Okada & Samreth (2012, EL) and Asongu (2012, EB) debate on ‘the effect of foreign aid on corruption’ by: not partially negating the former’s methodological underpinning (as in the latter’s approach) with a unifying empirical framework and; broadening the horizon of inquiry...

This is a pre-publication of the chapter of the same name which was first published in Freeman et al (2001), reproduced with the kind permission of the publishers. I have re-organized it for scholarly use as a separate text, with the references included and with footnotes instead of endnotes. I...

Whether justified by the concrete circumstances or not, an economic crisis is, by simple association, taken as an implicit refutation of the invisible hand vision and the underlying theory. The fundamental heterodox critique locates the source of apparent theoretical difficulties at the level of...

This paper puts figures to the facts of Eubank (2012), a recently celebrated paper in the Journal of Development Studies. We investigate the underpinning Somaliland-based hypothesis that foreign aid dilutes the positive role of taxation on political governance. The assessment is based on 53...

This note reconciles an on-going debate on the effect of foreign aid on corruption by introducing a previously missing heterogeneity dimension of aid. The relationship was estimated using dynamic system GMM and quantile regressions (QR). Results show that both narratives in the debate are...

Abstract This author sheds some light on the theoretical arguments on the use of selectivity and uniformity of trade policy in trade and industrialization for targeting industries and firms and provides a brief historical review of practices of developed countries and East Asian countries with...

The financial crisis of 2008 has challenged the reputation of the free-market economy in the public imagination in a way that it has not been challenged since the Great Depression. The intellectual consensus after World War II was that markets are unstable and exploitive and thus in need of...

Born out of the conscious effort to imitate mechanical physics, neoclassical economics ended up in the mid 20th century embracing a purely mathematical notion of rigor as embodied by the axiomatic method. This lecture tries to explain how this could happen, or, why and when the economists’...