Money has always been something of an embarrassment to economic theory. Everyone agrees that it is important; indeed, much of macroeconomic policy discussion makes no sense without reference to money. Yet, for the most part, theory fails to provide a good account for it. Indeed in the...

Arthur Okun - teacher at Yale in the 1950s, member and later Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors in the 1960s, and Fellow of the Brookings Institution throughout the 1970s - was one of the three or four most important macroeconomists of the past twenty years. He was perhaps...

When we take seriously Smiths's oft-expressed admiration for the "beauty of a systematical arrangement of different observations connected by a few common principles" (WN, V.i.f.25) and seek those"connecting principles" within his own system of thought, his "positive index of welfare" loses its...

While there can be no disputing Smith's clear intent to employ his labor-commanded unit as a medium of value measure, we are still left with the problem of reconciling the multiple forms and characteristics taken on by this measure and the various applications to which it is put.That is the task...

For more than one decade, Hayek's theory of cultural evolution has been the object of a double controversy, with scientific and philosophical aspects. What is in discussion is nothing less than the existence of inner contradictions in the work of the Austrian Nobel prize winner. Apparently...

The aim of this paper is to provide an outline of the development of the theory of exchange, concentrating on the less well-known development of the formal model which culminated in the contribution of Edgeworth. The importance of exchange, viewed as the central economic problem for the early...

In this paper I look in some detail at one specific aspect of macro distribution theories, namely Keynes's Macro theory of profits.

This paper addresses various attempts by so-called new Keynesians, writing mainly in the 1980s and 1990s, to strengthen the analytical basis, in particular the microeconomic foundations, of these assertions. What, exactly, have then the new Keynesians accomplished, and how should their...

This article is an obituary, in memoriam of professor Claudio Napoleoni, an economist and politician.

This paper addresses various attempts by so-called new Keynesians, writing mainly in the 1980s and 1990s, to strengthen the analytical basis, in particular the microeconomic foundations, of these assertions. What, exactly, have then the new Keynesians accomplished, and how should their...