Wirtschaftswissenschaften wird zunächst in Grundzügen beschrieben und dann hinsichtlich seiner langfristigen Tragfähigkeit kritisch reflektiert: Wir unterscheiden hierbei zwei gegensätzliche Standpunkte: Einen optimistischen und einen pessimistischen. Welchen man einnimmt, hängt wesentlich...

MINE - Mapping the Interplay between Nature and Economy is a digital archive and visual map showing the intersection between nature and economy. By focusing on the interconnections between fundamental concepts e.g. of time, thermodynamics, evolution, responsibility and justice, a new concept of...

The assumption of rationality is central in current economic theory. This hypothesis is the pillar for the creation of the homo economicus of conventional theory. Starting with Adam Smith’s approach to rationality, the aim of this paper is to contribute to the discussion of the main...

This article examines the wealth maximization principle, as developed by Richard Posner, and aims to clarify misunderstandings, address criticism, and contextualize its evolution within legal and philosophical analysis. The paper first delineates the distinction between the concepts of...

Market economies and command economies have long been differentiated by the presence of alternative choice in the form of diversity. Yet most mainstream economic theory is premised on the existence of uniformity. This paper develops the implications of this contradiction for the theory of...

This paper investigates the origin and evolution of the concept of the industrial district. The idea of industrial district is quite widespread in modern industrial economics and in business studies, with a variety of meanings and typologies. Indeed the real original conceptualisation dates back...

On a few occasions F.A. Hayek made reference to the famous Gödel theorems in mathematical logic in the context of expounding his cognitive and social theory. The exact meaning of the supposed relationship between Gödel´s theorems, on the one hand, and the essential proposition of Hayek´s...

This paper discusses the actual relevance and historical origins or 'competition universalism'. In economics, competition is conceptualized as a nearly ubiquitous element of societies, or, at least, used to study a wide array of social and political relations, including competition between firms...

We experiment with integrating economics and ethics in a form that could be described as literary-critical economic nonfiction. After offering an interpretation of Percy Shelley's “Prometheus Unbound,” we map the modern world of commerce into our interpretation of the lyrical drama to...

The moral philosopher and political economist Adam Smith (1723-1790) and the author Mary Shelley (1798-1851) are studied in different spheres of the academy, for rather different purposes, with no supposed reason for dialogue. We claim in a close concurrent reading, however, that Smith and...