A system of thought allowed for the free market price of land to cyclically go down to zero. This is the economics of Moses. The economics of Jesus is a restatement of the economics of Moses. The first was applied during Biblical times and the latter, united with Aristotle’s thought and...

Two common claims about mid-to-late twentieth century economics are that Walrasian ideas had an influence on the particular version of Keynesian macroeconomics that became dominant during the 1950s and 1960s, and that Walrasian general equilibrium theory passed its zenith in microeconomics at...

This paper addresses the question of why the economic theory of the Neoclassical Synthesis looked so much like the so-called "received view" philosophy of science during the same period (1945-1965). The paper discusses seven common features of the two programs and considers three possible...

In this paper we address the story of developments in general equilibrium theory (GET) in the USSR during the 1970s through the lens of a single biography. The Soviet advances in mathematical economics, only fragmentarily known in the West, give an occasion to reflect on the extension of the...

Paolo Sylos Labini's Oligopoly Theory and Technical Progress (1957) is considered one of the major contributions to entry-prevention models, especially after Franco Modigliani's famous formalization. Nonetheless, Modigliani neglected Sylos Labini's major aim when reviewing his work (1958),...

The present study raises the following questions: To what extent is axiomatic general equilibrium analysis a rational reconstruction of Scottish Political Economy as defined by the writings of David Hume and Adam Smith? How much is gained and how much lost by the axiomatic transformation of the...

The ‘Coase theorem' has long been the idea most commonly associated with Ronald Coase's analysis in The Problem of Social Cost. Yet, Coase frequently argued late in his career that he has been misunderstood, and that the central message(s) of the article lay elsewhere. Though virtually all of...

Environmentalism in the United States historically has been divided into its utilitarian and preservationist impulses, represented by Gifford Pinchot and John Muir, respectively. Pinchot advocated conservation of natural resources to be used for human purposes; Muir advocated protection from...

In this essay, we read McKenzie's seventeen paragraphs of 1957 on “demand theory without a utility index” as an opening to the narrative of 20th-century demand theory, and as a lever for the understanding of what has now reached culmination as the neoclassical theory of demand. In tracking...