A key feature of the general logic of paradigms or research programs as applied to the history of economic thought, is the acceptance of the fundamental change in the ways of formulating, and analyzing facts and concepts. One can discern an example of the above fundamental change in a critical...

The cornerstone of the hierarchical approach is that there are some basic human needs which must be satisfied before non-basic needs come into the picture. The hierarchical structure of needs implies that the satisfaction of primary needs provides substantial increases to individual happiness...

In the last 30 years, Greece has experienced a rapid rate of economic growth which has transformed the economy and enabled it to become a member of the EEC. Specifically, Greece transformed itself from an agricultural economy with virtually no industrial base to an economy with a significant...

With a career spanning over many decades, Tony Lawson has made important contributions ranging from the philosophy of social sciences, history economic thought, methodology of economics, political economy, monetary theory, to the theory of ethics. His work concerning ontology has had a...

The aim of this paper is to offer certain insights into the process of declining of scholastic economics in late medieval and early modern European intellectual circles. In this attempt, the paper adopts the metatheoretical framework of Laudan’s philosophy of science and introduces the concept...

In modern literature, the concept of work effort is used as an additional explanation of involuntary unemployment. In particular, it is assumed that higher wages have a positive effect on work effort and this is the fundamental point of the efficiency wage models of involuntary unemployment....

The vast majority of pre-Classical and of many Classical economists thought that it was natural to incorporate value judgments and norms in their economic reasoning. However, there was a gradual dominance of the idea of a neutral or value-free economic science which gained momentum with the...

Consumer theory is considered to be the hard core of the neoclassical canon. The present work traces the various historical stages which led to the acceptance of the theory, and attempts to offer some possible explanations for its eventual establishment. The paper starts with a brief historical...

The main starting point of this paper is the idea that trade unions do not only care about real wage level but also about a reference or aspiration wage level. After citing a number of empirical works, the paper argues that the attainment of the reference wage is a priority for the union. This...

In the last few decades the influence on economics of the ideas of T. Kuhn and I. Lakatos was considerable. The increasing use of terms like “paradigms” and “scientific research programmes” in almost every field of economics, is indicative of the influence of these two philosophers....