Early in the 18th century, before the birth of political economy as a discipline, two of the earliest novels in the English language were published: Robinson Crusoe (1719) by writer and economic entrepreneur Daniel Defoe, and Gulliver’s Travels (1726) by the cleric and political adviser...

Early in the 18th century, before the birth of political economy as a discipline, two of the earliest novels in the English language were published: Robinson Crusoe (1719) by writer and economic entrepreneur Daniel Defoe, and Gulliver's Travels (1726) by the cleric and political adviser Jonathan...

Nicolas Dutot (1684–1741) is an important figure for the history of economic thought, as a pioneer in monetary theory and price statistics, and for economic history as a chronicler of John Law’s System. Yet until recently very little about him was known, some of it incorrect. I present...

This paper sets out to investigate the forces behind the so-called global capital flows paradoxʺ and related dollar glutʺ observed in the era of advancing financial globalization. The supposed paradox is that the developing world has increasingly come to pursue policies that result in current...

The paper revisits some foreseeable disasters of the recent history of the global economy, from the consequences of the failed attempt to construct a disciplinary order based on the Washington Consensus paradigm, to the current global crisis, which dramatically showed the vulnerability of the...

This paper is a contribution to the elaboration of a narrative of the international economic disorder that followed the demise of the Bretton Woods regime. It therefore revisits some key episodes of the recent history of the world economy – the Washington Consensus saga and the widening of...

Dissatisfied with both Skidelsky's "Fighting for Britain" approach to Keynes's quest for a new global order and its specular competitor, the "Figthing despite Britain" view, we explore the possibility of a "Fighting through Britain" approach to the issue. We claim that though Keynes was fighting...

In the beginning of the second book of his Politeia (Republic) Plato in passage 2.358e-359a-c raises the issue of the administration of justice as a means of motivating people to behave fairly regarding their relationships and when cooperating with each other because, at the end, this is...

In the beginning of the second book of his Politeia (Republic) Plato in passage 2.358e-359a-c raises the issue of the administration of justice as a means of motivating people to behave fairly regarding their relationships and when cooperating with each other because, at the end, this is...

Lex mercatoria or Law Merchant (‘LM’) is said to be the self-made law of international commerce. According to its proponents, LM is an autonomous legal order that not only supplements state commercial law, but works as a substitute for it. The ‘ancient’ LM, which accompanied the...