Purpose – The purpose is to show the importance of language in economic activity and encourage economists to pay more attention to language than hitherto. Design/methodology/approach – The paper examines John Searle's work and consider its implications for economic theory. It discusses...

Commentators on market-oriented policy reform, e.g. John Williamson and Naomi Klein, have observed that radical policy change is often enacted in the wake of a “crisis†which is perceived to necessitate and justify the change. In section 2, I critically examine Williamson’s work...

This paper aims to extend the purview of Business History to the ancient world by exploring the hypothesis that the development of money was stimulated by legal institutions which regulated payment of compensation for torts. The hypothesis was propounded by Philip Grierson who argued that the...

Recent work on Ancient Greece sheds light on the origins of money and its effects on economy and society. This review essay analyses such work and relates it to themes familiar to economists. It examines monetary functions in the heroic world and the effects of introducing coinage in Classical...

Purpose – The purpose is to show the importance of language in economic activity and encourage economists to pay more attention to language than hitherto. Design/methodology/approach – The paper examines John Searle's work and consider its implications for economic theory. It discusses...

This paper develops a two-tier concept of rationality which broadens the orthodox notion of instrumental rationality in economics. In the first section, I conceive the idea of “background rationality” to consist in the ability to act normally, i.e., according to social conventions...