We consider a risk model in discrete time with dividends and capital injections. The goal is to maximise the value of a dividend strategy. We show that the optimal strategy is of barrier type. That is, all capital above a certain threshold is paid as dividend. A second problem adds tax to the...

The role of traveling as a source of discovery and development of new ideas has been controversial in the history of economics. Despite their protective attitude toward established theory, economists have traveled widely and gained new insights or asked new questions as a result of their...

The paper investigates Champernowne's 1936 attempt to sort out the debate between Pigou (1933) and Keynes (1936) about employment determination. Champernowne agreed with Keynes that workers can only bargain for a money-wage, but argued that, to the extent that workers' (adaptive) price...

In this review, I argue that Forder makes a fine job in debunking the story told by Friedman in his Nobel prize lecture about the Phillips curve yet fails to assess the validity of Phelps's and Friedman's contributions to the Phillips curve theory.

Today we can learn from the Communist Manifesto that unregulated markets lead to disastrous economic, social, and political developments, which can endanger the reproduction of the capital system itself. The liberal argument, based on Adam Smith's invisible hand - that markets coordinate the...

This paper discusses the similarities and differences in the plurality of practices regarding the use of interviews by historians of economics - i.e., either the use of someone else's interviews as sources or the use of interviews conducted by the historian for her or his work.

This chapter discusses the similarities and differences in the plurality of practices regarding the use of interviews by historians of economics - i.e., either the use of someone else's interviews as sources or the use of interviews conducted by the historian for her or his work. It draws on...

Das fundamentale Werk von John von Neumann und Oskar Morgenstern (1944) hat die Spieltheorie als Gebiet begründet. Es gab zwar vorher schon den in deutscher Sprache veröffentlichen Beitrag von John Neumann (1928) " Zur Theorie der Gesellschaftsspiele", aber erst mit dem Buch aus dem Jahre 1944...

A year after I started this project under the auspices of the Flynn Grant from Georgetown University's Center for German and European Studies it is finally finished, and only then because of the invaluable assistance of numerous kind individuals. In Cologne, Germany, the Institut für...

In this essay I review Sylvia Nasar's long awaited new history of economics, Grand Pursuit. I describe how the book is an economic history of the period from 1850-1950, with distinguished economists' stories inserted in appropriate places. Nasar's goal is to show how economists work, but also to...