John Rae has recently been rediscovered as a precursor of the endogenous growth theory. This study argues that Rae needs to be rediscovered a second time for his original contribution to clarify the role of the innovation and technical change within the economic systems. The aim of this paper is...

This paper looks into the scholastic definitions of the “just price” in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) and Bl. John Duns Scotus (1265-1308) and investigates whether they are conceptually different from the current “market price”. A specific focus is on whether government...

This 1997 review in the Times Literary Supplement (London) conjoins two books - the first, by investment banker turned finance historian Peter L. Berstein, is a history of the idea of risk, as it developed from Renaissance times through contemporary finance. The second, by the former editor of...

Studies of Bernard Mandeville by economists and historians of economic thought have focused overwhelmingly on the problem of situating his work within the development of the theory of laissez-faire and evaluating his influence on major figures in the Scottish Enlightenment, especially Adam...

Montchrétien was definitely mercantilist. He praises the ancients, their honors and their self-discipline, but notes, like Serra, that there was no concept of Political Economy in Antiquity. The words, however, appear for the first time in the pseudoaristotelian Oeconomica II, where the...

Richard Cantillon and David Hume both propose the theory of monetary non-neutrality, whereby the money supply changes through the money balances of specific individuals. Such an uneven distribution of monetary change then spreads throughout the economy step by step and changes relative prices....

Most contemporary moral defenses of capitalism rely on ideas drawn from the modern philosophic tradition that emerged in the 17th-18th centuries. Almost always, advocates of a free market society have either invoked the notion of a social contract, a theory of natural rights, the insistence that...

In 1715/16 Archbishop William King of Dublin used his experience as a Lord Justice during 1714-15 to write out a detailed case arguing that Ireland already paid more than its fair share of taxes to the Kingdom. In later years King became known as the leader of the Irish ‘nationals’ and his...

Economists have occasionally noticed the appearance of economists in cartoons produced for public amusement during crises. Yet the message behind such images has been less than fully appreciated. This paper provides evidence of such inattention in the context of the eighteenth century...

Richard Cantillon and David Hume both propose the theory of monetary nonneutrality, whereby the money supply changes through the money balances of specific individuals. Such an uneven distribution of monetary change then spreads throughout the economy step by step and changes relative prices....