Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) was an economist and journalist. A member of the French Liberal School, he is best known for his free trade ideas and his philosophy of law. Mark Blaug ranks him as one of the 100 greatest economists before Keynes. Schumpeter called him a brilliant economic...

This essay accepts the normative vision Richard Epstein sets forth in The Classical Liberal Constitution, but refracts that vision through some considerations of positive political economy. In response to a questioner who asked at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention what kind of...

An understanding of, and an intervention into, the present capitalist reality requires that we put together the insights of Karl Marx on labor, as well as those of Hyman Minsky on finance. The best way to do this is within a longer-term perspective, looking at the different stages through which...

German “Ordnungstheorie” (~ system theory, ordo theory) relates essentially to Walter Eucken (Freiburg) who attempted to strike a balance between the economics of the German Historic School, still relevant in Germany of the 1930s, and its opposing neoclassical analysis. The paper starts,...

What explains the simultaneous critiques of economic theory and liberalism during the 1930s? Early neoclassical economists had a common understanding of the proper institutional context under-girding a liberal market order. From the marginal revolution emerged a growing emphasis on analyzing...

The paper addresses the following questions: what type of crisis is this? How can we put the events together in our minds so that we have a coherent, complete picture of the crisis? How can we put this crisis in its historical context and what are the consequences for the future of our society?...

This article studies the few works James Buchanan wrote on education from the end of the 1950s to the early 1970s. These neglected works tell us important things about how Buchanan's ideas on constitutions evolved through time, because they provided Buchanan with the opportunity to apply his...

In the history of economic thought Walter Eucken is mostly known for his impact in establishing the Social Market Economy in post-war Germany. Even though there is a growing interest in his ideas especially from an Austrian and a Constitutional Economics perspective, his influence on the...

Ronald Coase (1910-2013), who sadly died at the remarkable age of 102, made significant contributions to economics based on common sense and the detailed study of his topics. Coase was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1991 “for his discovery and clarification of the significance...