The financial crisis of 2008 has challenged the reputation of the free-market economy in the public imagination in a way that it has not been challenged since the Great Depression. The intellectual consensus after World War II was that markets are unstable and exploitive and thus in need of...

Neoclassical theoretical approaches dominate modern health economics. However, the peculiarities of healthcare provision are so unusual that neoclassical theory is especially unsuited to the area. Even mainstream health economists often abandon Paretian welfare considerations to focus on needs...

This paper makes explicit the role of the entrepreneur in a consumer producer economy. Entrepreneurial behavior changes the status quo by altering existing comparative advantages. A positive feedback effect with trading institutions ensues. This model shows how the entrepreneur can, when...

Neoclassical economists of the current era frequently pay lip service to Adam Smith’s theories to certify the validity of natural-laws-based, laissez-faire policies. However, neoclassical theories are fundamentally disconnected from Adam Smith’s notion of value, his understanding of the...

This elaboration starts by deciphering modern science as a social subsystem being loosely coupled to the rest of society (section 2.1). Additionally, the way in which modern (monistic) economics was generated within this subsystem will be sketched (section 2.2). This will be contrasted with the...

Keynes provided a technical analysis on pages 179-181 of the General Theory that identified two separate rates of interest, r1 and r2, each different rate of interest associated with a different Demand for Investment and Supply of Savings Intersection. Each combination would provide a different,...

Neoclassical economists of the current era frequently pay lip service to Adam Smith's theories to certify the validity of natural-laws-based, laissez-faire policies. However, neoclassical theories are fundamentally disconnected from Adam Smith's notion of value, his understanding of the economic...

Don Ross' recent book Economic Theory and Cognitive Science (2005) provides an elaborate philosophical defense of neoclassical economics. He argues that the central features of neoclassical theory are associated with what he calls the Robbins-Samuelson argument pattern (RASP) and that it can be...