The debate on the alleged moral and political benefits of infant capitalism - as worked out in the now classical pieces by Louis Dumont, Pierre Rosanvallon and Albert Hirschman - concludes with the identification of a justification for the new order based on its expected positive effects on...

This article explores why Smith's work is a turning point in the history of economic thought. The constitution of an economic discourse and the delimitation of the economy sphere are attributed to: i) the specific nature of Smith's moral philosophy; ii) his way of conceiving economic action as...

The main reasons presented in The Wealth of Nations to advocate the system of economic liberty and reject mercantilism are analysed. These two systems are evaluated considering basically their impact on the annual product, and the degree of liberty and justice they engender. Based on his views...

This paper deals with the debate which opposed Sismondi and the Ricardian economists, in the first half of the nineteenth century, on the equilibrium of markets, the role of competition and the effects of machinery in industrial societies. At the initial section, the main content of Sismondi?s...

This paper analyses J.S. Mill?s conceptions on what would be the proper form of government and the proper scope of State intervention in economic life. It is argued that, for Mill, the answer depended on the type of society in question. In ?backward? societies, in which the population...

Our goal in this paper is to shed light on a forgotten contribution to Brazilian economic thought, that is Victor Viana's 1922 book Histórico da Formação Econômica do Brasil (Brazilian Economic Formation's Timeline). That book never got a second edition, and is rarely referenced among both...

This paper tries to identify some points of touch between the Treatise on Money and the General Theory of Keynes, since a detailed analysis of some passages of the Treatise.

The work of Douglass North represents today an important reference for those studying issues related to growth and institutional economics. After the book Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (1990) and the Nobel prize in 1993, his contributions seem to have been...

This paper contemplates the evolution of Pigou's stance towards the Keynesian Revolution. Preliminarily, a brief contrast between his and Keynes's approach to the problem of unemployment is made. After that, Pigou's first reactions to The General Theory are presented, along with the rejoinder...

English Abstract: Accounts of Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen's career as an economist usually focus either on the brilliance of his pioneer contributions to mathematical economics during the 1930s, or more frequently, on his later conversion to a critical approach to economic theory anchored on the...