David Laidler is one of the leading scholars in the history of economic thought and macroeconomics. This important collection brings together nineteen of his essays on topics in the history of macroeconomics. It begins with a paper on Adam Smith and ends with a discussion of the implications of...

How did neoclassical monetary economics, as epitomized by the work of Fisher, Wicksell, and the Cambridge School, evolve from the classical orthodoxy that dominated economics in the 1870s? To answer this question, David Laidler considers the interaction of theoretical developments with...

While unemployment has been the common experience of OECD countries over the last three decades, there have also been significant differences in its severity and extent. These differences were characterised in the 1990s as a “trade‐off” between unemployment and wage inequality. According...

Despite improved employment performance across the OECD in the late 1990s, unemployment remains a key issue for analysis and debate among policy makers. This paper outlines the experience and developing policy of “New Labour” in the UK, the philosophy of the “Third Way” associated with...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants of best management practices in an Australian state-run healthcare system, namely New South Wales (NSW), and studies the impact of a range of hospital factors in driving best management practices as a means of enhancing...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the quality of management practices of public hospitals in the Australian healthcare system, specifically those in the state-managed health systems of Queensland and New South Wales (NSW). Further, the authors assess the management...

A large body of research in recent years has resulted in the accumulation of knowledge about better (worse) management practices for manufacturing firms. Given the wide dissemination of knowledge about practices such as Lean Manufacturing, the importance of goal-setting, performance management...