It has been widely accepted that philosophers of science wrote a “swansong” for positivism during the second half of the 20th century. Milton Friedman and Paul Samuelson, major contributors in the fi eld of economic methodology at the time, the argument goes, never refl ected the demise....

Gunnar Myrdal published Asian Drama in 1968, a work which made important analytical contributions to our understanding of development but was deeply pessimistic about Asia's future prospects. Since then, contrary to Myrdal's expectations, Asia's development has been remarkable, although...

Gunnar Myrdal published Asian Drama in 1968, a work which made important analytical contributions to our understanding of development but was deeply pessimistic about Asia's future prospects. Since then, contrary to Myrdal's expectations, Asia's development has been remarkable, although...

The purpose of this chapter is to link Ronald Coase's methodological approach to what he ‘learned' when he was at the London School of Economics (LSE) from Edwin Cannan and Arnold Plant. The main lesson Coase taught us and insisted upon was that economics should not be too ‘abstract' and...

Jim Buchanan kept pictures of Knut Wicksell and Frank H. Knight on his office wall. Yet a careful look at Buchanan's work indicates that it ran counter to that of Frank H. Knight. Knight and Buchanan disagreed on the methodological, economic, ethical, and political assumptions that drove their...

We reply to Scott Scheall's What is so Extreme About Mises's Extreme Apriorism. We restate the setting of the topic of our paper and we argue that Scheall is not providing a clear distinction between (a) Mises the person and his epistemological position and (b) praxeology and economics. We also...

Português Resumo: Herbert Simon (1916-2001) foi um importante crítico do uso feito na Economia do conceito de racionalidade como fator explicativo básico do comportamento econômico, tendo criado e difundido para esse fim o conceito de racionalidade limitada. Segundo ele, a capacidade...

Once economics came to be understood as the scientific investigation of the operation of markets, economic theorists pushed ethical and metaphysical concerns outside their realm of study. After the separation, the claims of Christian theology had no more jurisdiction over the discipline of...

This paper has two main goals. The first is to study the links between the "new" economic theories, this is, the "new" trade theory, the "new" growth theory and the "new" economic geography. These are three apparently distinct strands of economics, yet they have a common motivation: the role of...

Ludwig von Mises was one of the greatest economists and political scientists of the twentieth century. He revolutionized the understanding of money, inflation and recessions; comprehensively refuted the arguments for socialism; and provided a devastating critique of the methodologies of...