This paper examines Mark Blaug's position on the normative character of Paretian welfare economics: in general, and specifically with respect to his debate with Pieter Hennipman over this question during the 1990s. The paper also clarifies some of the confusions that emerged within the context...

Unlike standard accounts, recent research in the history of macroeconomics has given increasing attention to the Old Keynesians’ criticisms of the New Classical Economics. In this paper, I address the case of Edmond Malinvaud, who began opposing the latter from the early 1980s and did so...

The death of welfare economics has been declared several times. One of the reasons cited for these plural obituaries is that Kenneth Arrow's impossibility theorem, as set out in his path-breaking Social Choice and Individual Values in 1951, has shown that the social welfare function - one of the...

This paper was presented as the Henry Hazlitt Memorial Lecture at the Austrian Economics Research Conference, Ludwig von Mises Institute Auburn, Alabama. In this lecture, I look at a debate in the 1960s between Frank H. Knight, the subject of my new book (2016) in Palgrave Macmillan's Great...

This paper provides a welfare analysis of trade liberalization based upon the moral principles of utilitarianism. The history of the moral philosophy of utilitarianism is described including its introduction into what became known as Cambridge welfare economics. The differences between this...

The death of welfare economics has been declared several times. One of the reasons cited for these plural obituaries is that Kenneth Arrow's impossibility theorem, as set out in his path-breaking Social Choice and Individual Values in 1951, has shown that the social welfare function – one of...

In the second edition of his methodological Essay, Lionel Robbins attributes a significant role to uncertainty, dynamics and the time element. Understanding the motives that led to these revisions may offer important clues to assess what happened to political economy ever since, and how far...

Ordoliberalism and Keynesianism are not exactly known to fit hand in glove. Accordingly, the German economists Walter Eucken, head of the Freiburg school, and Wilhelm Röpke, from his Istanbul and Geneva exiles, were in near perfect agreement in their opposition to the interventionist "full...

In their quest to maximize efficiency, law and economics scholars often produce novel, creative, and counterintuitive legal rules. Indeed, legal economists have argued for baby selling, against anti-discrimination laws in the workplace, and for insider trading. In this essay, we discuss some...

In their article published in a recent issue of this journal, Wysocki and Megger (2019) attempt to undermine Rothbard’s welfare theory as articulated in his classic essay on the subject (2008). More specifically, they suggest that the theory in question generates some fatally counterintuitive...