In Hume's epistemology, induction leads to discovery in matters of fact. However, because of the poor data Hume analyzes the balance of trade with a thought experiment, doing what Mill makes explicit afterwards: reason from assumptions, to reach conclusions which are true in the abstract. Hume's...

This paper explores the intellectual history of the state, or chartalist, approach to money, from the early developers (Georg Friedrich Knapp and A. Mitchell Innes) through Joseph Schumpeter, John Maynard Keynes, and Abba Lerner, and on to modern exponents Hyman Minsky, Charles Goodhart, and...

In this review essay of Medema's and Waterman's collection of some of Samuelson's writings in the history of economics, the author argues that Samuelson's claim to have written “Whig History” is spurious. Moreover the author argues that Samuelson's own writings on modern economics are,...

The common interpretation of Carl Menger's take on capital theory rests upon a few sentences in his Principles of Economics. His later monograph on the topic, Zur Theorie des Kapitals (A contribution to the theory of capital), is more or less ignored, although it must be seen as a recantation of...

Mark Blaug brought his usual standards of historical awareness and respect for empirical content to bear when he wrote about the Quantity Theory of Money, but he hesitated to probe too deeply into the political and ideological elements of its history, perhaps leading him to underestimate their...

When two production techniques are compared, reswitching occurs when a technique begins by being cheapest at a low interest rate, switches to being more expensive at a higher rate, and then reswitches to being cheapest at yet higher rates. Some believe the inconsistency undermines the...

The present paper is devoted to showing that all externalist explanations for truth in economics are false, but that if there any are used, it should not be the democratic one utilized by Rosen (1997). Rather, even though it is equally fallacious, it should the one proposed in the present paper:...

This paper suggests that, with the help of Concordian economics, the economic process can be studied through the perspectives of Production of real wealth; Distribution of ownership rights; Consumption of financial instruments (as well as the integration of these three perspectives). The...