The paper sketches a coherent history of the choice of the measure standard from Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations to Sraffa's Production of Commodities. As neither the Smithian labour commanded unit nor the Ricardian-Marxian labour embodied one provide a general solution to the dilemma concerning...

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 economic...

This paper argues that despite a growing body of scholarly literature on Sir James Steuart, his theory of history and influence on Marxian political economy has been largely ignored. The approach of this paper is motivated, in part, by Marx's sympathetic treatment of Steuart found in the opening...

Die Begriffe Wohlfahrt und Wohlstand werden in ihrem dogmenhistorischen Entstehungskontext untersucht. Dabei wird zum einen der Schwerpunkt auf die von den Physiokraten, aber auch von John Stuart Mill, W. Stanley Jevons und sogar von deutschen Ordoliberalen thematisierten Wachstumsgrenzen gelegt...

The theory and practice of stabilization policy has taken many turns as it evolved over the past century, oscillating between high hopes and deep skepticism regarding the capacity - and desirability - of governments taking responsibility for macroeconomic stability. This paper reviews the...

The monetary economy has properties that cannot be analyzed using the tools of today's dynamic general equilibrium analysis. Keynes's economics, far from being an aberration in the otherwise orderly evolution of modern macroeconomics from Adam Smith's ideas about the invisible hand, was a major...

In this paper the view of humankind and nature upon which the thinking of Malthus is founded will be reflected on and contrasted with the opposed understanding of his contemporary Wordsworth. We show that the economic considerations of both are based decidedly on the premise of these views, and...

Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz (1868 - 1931) was a European statistician. His scientific work covered theoretical economics, stochastics, mathematical statistics and radiology, today we would call him a cross disciplinary scientist. With his clear views on mathematical principles with their...

This paper defends The Transformation of Values into Prices on the Basis of Random Systems, published in EIER, by answering to the Comments made in the same journal by Professors Mori, Morioka and Yamazaki. The clarifications mainly concern the justification of the randomness assumptions, the...

Standard histories of economics usually treat the "marginal revolution" of the midnineteenth century as both supplanting the "classical" economics of Smith and Ricardo and as advancing the idea of economics as a mathematical science. The marginalists - especially Jevons and Walras - viewed...