Over the course of their professional lives, Henry E. Kyburg, Isaac Levi, and Jochen Runde have maintained the claim that J M Keynes’s contributions to probability and decision theory were of a comparative, qualitative nature only. They maintained that J M Keynes had some interesting, but...

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...

In this essay I review Sylvia Nasar's long awaited new history of economics, Grand Pursuit. I describe how the book is an economic history of the period from 1850-1950, with distinguished economists' stories inserted in appropriate places. Nasar's goal is to show how economists work, but also to...

In der Ökonomik tritt der zirkuläre "unechte" Fortschritt auf, der sich z.B. vom kumulativen, besonders für die Naturwissenschaften charakteristischen Fortschritt abgrenzt. Die Ideen- bzw. Dogmengeschichte kann somit eine wertvolle Erkenntnisquelle sein. In diesem Papier wird das Konzept der...

Das fundamentale Werk von John von Neumann und Oskar Morgenstern (1944) hat die Spieltheorie als Gebiet begründet. Es gab zwar vorher schon den in deutscher Sprache veröffentlichen Beitrag von John Neumann (1928) Zur Theorie der Gesellschaftsspiele, aber erst mit dem Buch aus dem Jahre 1944...

This paper concerns a neglected aspect of Lucas's work: his methodological writings, published and unpublished. Particular attention is paid to his views on the relationship between theory and ideology. I start by setting out Lucas's non-standard conception of theory: to him, a theory and a...

As existing literature attests, in spite of methodological differences Marx and Veblen draw strikingly similar conclusions regarding production, conflict, and alienation in modern existence. We here attempt to establish that similarity in conclusion stems from similarity in approach. After...

Der diesjährige Nobelpreis für Ökonomie ging an einen Wirtschaftswissenschaftler, der sich mit dem Wettbewerb auf Märkten und der Regulierung von Unternehmen befasst und dies solide – auch spieltheoretisch – fundiert. Jean Tirole hat allerdings ein sehr breites Forschungsspektrum, das...

A year after I started this project under the auspices of the Flynn Grant from Georgetown University's Center for German and European Studies it is finally finished, and only then because of the invaluable assistance of numerous kind individuals. In Cologne, Germany, the Institut für...

This article considers the empirical record of the 1942-1951 period of Federal Reserve history when the Fed was more politically accountable and more independent of private financial interests. During the 1940s, federal spending was nearly twice as high as today, and federal borrowing was more...