The paper considers Keynes's major contributions before "The General Theory", namely "A Tract on Monetary Reform" and "A Treatise on Money", and shows that they were close to the views which Friedman would later develop. However, "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money" represented...

This article explains two enigmas related to the scientific career of Thomas C. Schelling, Nobel Price in Economics 2005: How to explain his capacity to always produce new ideas? Why have his multiple pioneer ideas had more impact on other social sciences and not on economics? The paper proposes...

This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of the book that established the field of public choice – The Calculus of Consent by James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock. The year is also the thirtieth anniversary of Elinor Ostrom’s “Covenants With and Without a Sword,” in which she...

In the attempt to answer three (interrelated) questions, we concentrate on a crucial step in Goodwin's (RMG) life: his move from Cambridge, Mass. to Cambridge, UK. Why did RMG not get a permanent position at Harvard? How did RMG reach the decision to settle down in Cambridge, UK? Why was it that...

The objective of Ed Nelson’s two-volume book, Milton Friedman and Economic Debate in the United States, 1932-1972, is to provide an account of Friedman’s views in major monetary-policy debates during the period identified in the book’s title. Nelson tells the story of the development of...

This paper discusses how Mark Blaug reversed his thinking about the historiography of economics, abandoning rational reconstructions for historical ones, by using an economics of scientific knowledge argument against Paul Samuelson and others that rational reconstructions of past ideas and...

In this paper the view of humankind and nature upon which the thinking of Malthus is founded will be reflected on and contrasted with the opposed understanding of his contemporary Wordsworth. We show that the economic considerations of both are based decidedly on the premise of these views, and...