The objective of this article is to examine four theories that consider an explanation and measurement for the value of liquidity. Liquidity will be understood as cash, that is, we are leaving aside assets of lesser degree of liquidity than cash. The article begins with the Keynesian view about...

This article addresses the question of whether sanctions constitute violence in the broad sense of that term, and whether, and under what conditions, sanctions can be justified. The sanctions imposed against Iraq and Cuba are discussed as case studies and several ethical theories are applied to...

Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) was an economist and journalist. A member of the French Liberal School, he is best known for his free trade ideas and his philosophy of law. Mark Blaug ranks him as one of the 100 greatest economists before Keynes. Schumpeter called him a brilliant economic...

Keynes is back. President Obama's economic stimulus package is based on the premise that we can spend our way out of recession. It is an application of the Keynesian multiplier theory, which was expounded in Keynes' 1936 economic treatise, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money....

Although Cournot's mathematical economics was generally neglected until the mid- 1870s, he was taken up and carefully studied by the Scientific Club of Cambridge, Massachusetts even before his "discovery" by Walras and Jevons. The episode is reconstructed from fragmentary manuscripts of the...

In this paper we use insights from Sraffa's classic, Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, to argue that the classical notion of ‘centre of gravitation' is not a sound concept. The market mechanics of labour allocation through price signals and quantity adjustments, given...

Critical reflection concerning the tension existing between developing the body of economic knowledge in the image of mathematics led to discovering a double epistemological rupture in developing economic theory. The first, in the mid nineteenth century, recognised mathematics as being the...

Carl Menger’s Principles of Economics, published in 1871, is usually regarded as the founding document of the Austrian School of economics. Many of the School’s prominent representatives, including Friedrich Wieser, Eugen Böhm-Bawerk, Ludwig Mises, Hans Mayer, Friedrich August Hayek, Fritz...

This paper examines how some of the main exponents of the Austrian school of economics addressed the issues related to the measurability of utility. The first part is devoted to the period before World War I. During this period, Menger and Wieser treated de facto utilities as if they were...

This essay is a response to five essays that collectively constituted a symposium sponsored by Studies in Emergent Order on my 2010 book, Mind, Society, and Human Action: Time and Knowledge in a Theory of Social Economy. This essay offers individual reactions to each of the five contributors...