This paper is a study of Bentham's felicific calculus. Challenging a view that contrasts 'cardinal' to 'ordinal' calculus, we show that these two forms of calculus constitute instead different phases of a single approach. Bentham sometimes has to rely upon proxy variables because of operational...

The core idea of utilitarianism for Bentham is to establish that only individual utilities count in social welfare. There can be two distinct interpretations of this apparently simple principle. According to one view, individual utilities represent the basic information for the calculation of...

Don Patinkin was a major contributor to the debate over the Keynesian revolution who, later in his career, became a historian of Keynesian economics. Drawing on unpublished papers as well as his publications, this paper traces the evolution of Patinkin's writing on this subject and seeks to...

This paper tells the story of the field of the history of economic thought in relation to the changing boundaries between the disciplines of economics and economic history. The most important period was the late nineteenth century when, after a couple of decades during which both economists and...

This paper is a response to Michel De Vroey's review of our book, published in this issue of EJHET. Differently from De Vroey's, our aim is to understand the theoretical choices with which economists believed they were confronted at the time. This is reflected in the organisation of our book,...