It is hard to find a book that explains, simply and fairly, what capitalism is, how it works, and its strengths and weaknesses. The very word capitalism was coined as a term of abuse. And still today, most books on the subject remain hostile to capitalism, or paint a distorted, confused picture...

The American historical profession has in recent years witnessed a significant revival of two subfields that were once thought to be nearly dead. Both intellectual history and what is often referred to today as the history of capitalism are flourishing. In some cases, the two fields have...

This article is the introductory chapter to a festschrift in honour of Geoff Hodgson. In work spanning four decades, Geoff Hodgson has made many path-breaking contributions to institutional economics, evolutionary economics, economic methodology, the history of economic thought and social theory...

This paper presents an overview of different models which explain financial crises, with the aim of understanding economic developments during and possibly after the Great Recession. In the first part approaches based on efficient markets and rational expectations hypotheses are analyzed, which...

Most mainstream neoclassical economists completely failed to anticipate the crisis which broke in 2007 and 2008. There is however a long tradition of economic analysis which emphasises how growth in a capitalist economy leads to an accumulation of tensions and results in periodic crises. This...

This article revisits the socioeconomic theory of the Austrian School economist Ludwig M. Lachmann. By showing that the common claim that Lachmann's idiosyncratic (i.e., eclectic and multidisciplinary) approach to economics entails nihilism is unfounded, it reaches the following conclusions. (1)...

The paper revisits the socioeconomic theory of the Austrian School economist Ludwig M. Lachmann. By showing that the common claim that Lachmann's idiosyncratic (read: eclectic and multidisciplinary) approach to economics entails nihilism is unfounded, it reaches the following conclusions. (1)...