William Stanley Jevons’s “Sunspot Theory” of business cycles related the number of spots on the sun to economic activity, primarily through the weather and agriculture, but also through psychological components like optimism and uncertainty. The theory is widely discredited, but John...

This paper is concerned with the meaning and validity of the 'Ricardo effect'. It is shown that the machinery substitution effect contemplated by David Ricardo (a) is not caused by a rise in the real wage rate, (b) is independent of the so-called 'price effect', and (c) presupposes very special...

Robert Triffin became famous with his trenchant analyses of the vulnerabilities of the Bretton Woods system. These are still at the center of many discussions today. This paper argues that there is a remarkable continuity in Triffin's work. From his earliest writings, Triffin developed a vision...

It is generally accepted that F.A. Hayek gave up the business cycle as an object of theoretical investigation following the publication of 1941's The Pure Theory of Capital. The present paper aims to cast a shade of doubt upon this received view. Many of Hayek's philosophical writings bear...

Friedrich Hayek has been one of the dominating intellectual figures of the 20th century. Hayek, together with Gunnar Myrdal, received the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in economics, for "their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetrating analysis of the...