Der Artikel beschaeftigt sich mit der Bedeutung des Homo oeconomicus fuer die Wirtschaftswissenschaften in der Vergangenheit, der Gegenwart und Zukunft. Quintessenz der Untersuchung ist, dass die wahre Bedeutung des Homo oeconomicus weniger in seiner methodologischen Funktion zu sehen ist, als...

As the heirs to classical political economy and the German historical school, the American institutionalists retained rent theory and its corollary idea of unearned income. More than any other institutionalist, Thorstein Veblen emphasized the dynamics of banks financing real estate speculation...

Given the renewed interest in negative interest rates, this article analyses Gesell’s theory of interest and its connection to J. M. Keynes’ General Theory. Gesell recognised that money has little or no carrying costs in comparison to goods. Therefore, money holders are able to withhold from...

It is traditionally claimed that the State has three main categories of policies to implement: allocation, distribution and stabilization policies. In the present chapter we will be concerned only with stabilization policies or, more generally, with the role public policies may have in...

The theme of academic anti-Semitism has been much discussed recently in histories of the interwar period of the University of Vienna, in particular its Faculty of Law and Policy Sciences. This paper complements these studies by focusing in this regard on the economics chairs at this faculty and,...

This paper intends to present a particular analysis of Thorstein Veblen’s work. In this fashion, we have identified a central idea that commands his oeuvre: the non-teleologism. In addition, as a another central objective, the study pretends to establish a relationship between this hard core...

This paper contains a short history of business cycle theory. It is argued that in the course of time the emphasis shifted from a mainly exogenous to a mainly endogenous explanation of the cycle. After the integration of the two approaches in the so-called impulse and propagation theory, the...

Over 100 years since Marx's value theory of labour was first published, the so-called ``transformation problem'' -- deriving prices from values and providing a theory of profits as arising from surplus value -- has inspired the imagination of economists of all shades of intellectual suasion....

The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of the impact the UV-curve had on economic theory and to provide an account of the subsequent radical changes in its place and role over the decades since its first appearance in 1958. The paper traces the historical development of the UV-curve...