The role of first principles in economics is examined through the lens of dominant methodological approaches of the classical and neoclassical periods. First principles are most clearly displayed in pure deductive systems. The tension between first principles as the basis for deductivist...

Henry Thornton (1760-1815), whose major work - An Enquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Paper Credit of Great Britain - is celebrating its bicentennary in 2002, is considered today to be one of the most prominent classical monetary economist, in particular with regard to its seminal...

Joan Robinson was a self admitted, mathematically illiterate economist who had no idea about what Keynes was doing or saying in the period 1930-1936. She relied completely for her understanding of economics on her very close, personal relationship with R. Kahn. Kahn would explain and develop the...

An enduring myth accepted by all Orthodox and heterodox economists is that it was Richard Kahn who discovered and originated the concept of the multiplier. Kahn then supposedly showed Keynes how the multiplier concept could be specified mathematically so as to provide hard support for Keynes's...