This paper traces the evolution of the concept of capital in economic literature––from the ‘fund’ concept prevalent in pre-classical and classical writings to the stress on ‘physical capital’ in neoclassical literature and finally to ‘human capital’ in endogenous growth theory....

In the past two decades path-dependency theories not only became a prominent mode of explanation in the social sciences, but also re-awakened the interest in historical-based theories in the study of social and organizational change and continuity. Nonetheless, because of their popularity and...

A system of thought allowed for the free market price of land to cyclically go down to zero. This is the economics of Moses. The economics of Jesus is a restatement of the economics of Moses. The first was applied during Biblical times and the latter, united with Aristotle’s thought and...

In this essay, I use a general argument about the evidential role of data in ongoing inquiry to show that it is fruitful for economic historians and historians of economics to collaborate more frequently. The shared aim of this collaboration should be to learn from past economic experience in...

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,...

Jaký je přínos historického příkladu pro pochopení ekonomických jevů? Ekonomové obecně aplikují metody přírodních věd. Ale ekonomie je společenská věda a pozorované ekonomické jevy jsou kvalitativně odlišné od pozorovaných jevů přírodních věd. Proto uplatnění...

As history, institutions, social and political forces specific to any economy have a profound effect on that economy's dynamics, it is important to understand how these have evolved with the development of capitalism. The classical economists analysed economies with labour surpluses, which kept...

In 1979, when anthropometric history was still in its infancy, Robert Fogel and collaborators reported that the height of the US male white population began to decline quite unexpectedly around the birth cohorts of 1830. This was quite a conundrum on account of the fact that according to...

Economic History and the History of Economic Thought haven been relegated increasingly from the teaching and research curricula of economics in recent years. The paper starts off arguing that this trend is due to the mechanistic ontology of mainstream economics, and it continues setting out an...