In 1958 Jacob Mincer pioneered an important approach to understand earnings distribution. In the years since Mincer?s seminal work, he as well as his students and colleagues extended the original human capital model, reaching important conclusions about a whole array of observations pertaining...

Paul Samuelson proposed and practiced a program for the Whig history of economics. One such example is his account of Frank Ramsey's contribution to optimal taxation in 1927. For him and mainly for the public finance economists who rediscovered later Ramsey's contribution, Ramsey was a genius...

Was the Keynesian message alive during the second half of the XXth Century, or was it betrayed by his followers? This article in the fields of the history of economic thought and methodology contrasts the Scientific Research Programmes (SRPs), a Lakatosian concept, of Keynes in The General...

We argue that the canonical reading of Hayek often falls short of the implications of Hayek's insights. We present Hayek's "knowledge problem" (how order in a society is possible without the required knowledge for that order being possessed by any particular individual), and we discuss some of...

The libertarian defense of free enterprise, free trade, and freedom from government regulations and controls is grounded in a normative commitment to individual freedom. The majority of the economics profession, including the Chicago School, are committed in the first instance to methodological...

Adam Smith is commonly referred to as one of the first who thought of foreign trade in terms of an international division of labour, whereby each country specialises in the production of certain goods. It is argued that he made a strong case for foreign trade on this basis. In this article, I...

This note reviews the changes Samuelson made to the family tree of economics between the 4th and 11th editions of his textbook Economics in relation to the book's changing coverage of the history of economic thought. Of particular interest are the development from "neoclassical synthesis" to...

In the context of the special issue on Joseph Steindl, we offer here a republication of Steindl's contribution to the series "Recollections of Eminent Economics", originally published in vol. 37 n. 148 of "Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Quarterly Review". With the series of Recollections the journal...

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...

In the context of the special issue on Joseph Steindl, we offer here a republication of Steindl's contribution to the series “Recollections of Eminent Economics”, originally published in vol. 37 n. 148 of “Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Quarterly Review”. With the series of Recollections the...