Why were the rating agencies trusted? When they became required for Federal deposit insurance their incentives for upward bias was common knowledge. The requirement was attacked by a Chicago economist, Melchior Palyi, on philosophical grounds (the expertise is excessively secret) and technical...

Why were the rating agencies trusted? When they became required for Federal deposit insurance their incentives for upward bias was common knowledge. The requirement was attacked by a Chicago economist, Melchior Palyi, on philosophical grounds (the expertise is excessively secret) and technical...

This paper constitutes the start of a project dedicated to Austrian economist and economic sociologist Friedrich von Wieser (1851-1926). Its central claim is that especially in recent decades, Wieser has become a disproportionately underresearched scholar, and the paper provides a set of...

This paper provides, after a contextualizing introduction, the first-time translation of Walter Eucken’s presentation during the first session of the founding meeting of the Mont Pèlerin Society, April 1-10, 1947. Eucken was the only scholar based in Germany to attend the conference and took...

In the history of economic thought Walter Eucken is mostly known for his impact in establishing the Social Market Economy in post-war Germany. Even though there is a growing interest in his ideas especially from an Austrian and a Constitutional Economics perspective, his influence on the...

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...

We argue James M. Buchanan's scholarship provides us an exemplary model for doing liberal political economy. Levy (2014) argues there are irreconcilable tensions within liberalism between rationalism and pluralism. Buchanan navigates these tensions in a way that powered one of the most important...

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...

This paper examines how Samuelson defined his own role as an economist as a technical expert, who walked what he called ‘the middle of the road' to – seemingly – stay out of the realm of politics. As point of entry I discuss the highly tempting offers made by Theodore M. Schultz in the...