The aim of this paper is to systematically enquire into the relationship Robbins sets in his writings - prior to the Essay and further brought out in several subsequent works - between 'economic science' and 'political economy' in order to understand the role of each in the work of the...

I argue that economists have reasons internal to the way that evidence works in the sciences to re-discover the importance of the history of their own discipline. For it is a constitutive element of science - here conceived as an ongoing research practice (as opposed to as an explanatory...

In 2015 Saskia Sassen published an article in ‘The Guardian' pointing on the direct relationship between the implementation of large – or gigantic – urban regeneration projects and the de-urbanisation of city. This lecture note questions the empirical relevance of discussing the dynamics...

The article provides a review of Sylos Labini's memories, collected here on occasion of the tenth anniversary of his passing away. The author reports on the proceedings of two conferences in memory of Sylos Labini held in Rome, on 18 November 2015 at the Lincean Academy and on 4 December 2015 at...

A transcription of a 2019 conversation with Duke historian E. Roy Weintraub on his intellectual development over the 1980s from mathematician to economist to historian. The conversation also explored Weintraub's early and continuing attempts to forge new ways to study the history of contemporary...

The rhetoric of positivism had a profound effect on the worldview and practice of economists in the middle of the last century. Though this influence has greatly diminished, it still may be found in the attitude of many economists towards the history of their discipline. This paper traces the...

The main point of this paper is to contribute to understanding Milton Friedman’s (1953) “The Methodology of Positive Economics” (hereafter F1953), one of the most influential statements of economic methodology of the twentieth century, and, in doing so, help discern the non trivial but...

Ronald Coase merged two traditions in economics, marginalism and institutionalism. Neoclassical economics in the 1930s was characterized by an abstract conception of marginalism and frictionless resource movement. Marginal analysis did not seek to uncover the source of individual human...

The aim of this paper is to explain what philosophical commitments drove mainstream professional economists to understand their own discipline as leaving no space for ethics (including virtue) between, say, 1887 and 1971. In particular, it is argued that economics embraced a technocratic...

The interpretive critique is primarily focused on economics as a system for understanding markets as a dynamic process of human interactions and exchange. It does not equate economics with the market but instead understands economics as one of several ways of interpreting the market. The...