Neoclassical economists of the current era frequently pay lip service to Adam Smith’s theories to certify the validity of natural-laws-based, laissez-faire policies. However, neoclassical theories are fundamentally disconnected from Adam Smith’s notion of value, his understanding of the...

Orthodox and heterodox theories of financial crises are hereby compared from a theoretical viewpoint, with emphasis on their genesis. The former view (represented by the fourthgeneration models of Paul Krugman) reflects the neoclassical vision whereby turbulence is an exception; the latter...

This paper argues that a hierarchy of ideals exists in market interactions that sets the benchmark on the norm of fairness associated with these interactions, thus affecting pricing decisions associated with market exchange. As norms emerge, an ideal determines the criteria of optimal behavior...

Starting from the mid-nineteenth century, this paper analyzes two periods of financial instability connected with financial globalization. The first culminates with the 1929 crisis, while the second characterizes the more recent experience starting from the 1970s. The period in between is...

What is called 'capitalism' is best understood as a series of stages. Industrial capitalism has given way to finance capitalism, which has passed through pension fund capitalism since the 1950s and a US-centered monetary imperialism since 1971, when the fiat dollar (created mainly to finance US...

Against the background of modern-day monetary proposals, ranging from a return to the gold standard to the wholesale abolition of currency, this paper seeks to draw implications from David Ricardo’s Proposals for an Economical and Secure Currency for plans to reform the operation of central...

Ragnar Nurkse was one the pioneers in development economics. This paper celebrates the hundredth anniversary of his birth with a critical retrospective of his overall contribution to the field, in particular his views on the importance of employment policy in mobilizing domestic resources and...

This paper sets out to investigate the forces behind the so-called global capital flows paradoxʺ and related dollar glutʺ observed in the era of advancing financial globalization. The supposed paradox is that the developing world has increasingly come to pursue policies that result in current...

Over the last two centuries in Latin America a Washington Consensus development strategy based on integration in the global trading system has dominated both domestic demand management and industrialization from within.ʺ This paper assesses the performance of each from the point of view of the...

This paper argues that John Maynard Keynes had a targeted (as contrasted with aggregate) demand approach to full employment. Modern policies, which aim to close the demand gap,ʺ are inconsistent with the Keynesian approach on both theoretical and methodological grounds. Aggregate demand tends...