The main purpose of this article is to stress the social nature of economic rationality in the works of Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill. As it will be suggested through some textual evidence, both thinkers believed that individuals and their actions depend on the social, cultural and moral frame...

The aim of this empirical research was to test the influence of some social factors such as social norms, habits and routines, which are actually constraining the entrepreneurial strategy. In order to measure the extent of these influences we have focused on informal arrangements and cooperation...

[eng] The assumptions controversy in the 1870's. The purpose of this paper is to present one aspect of the english "Battle on Method" between the Historical School and the last representatives of the Ricardian Political Economy, reformulated by J.S. Mill. One of the main points of the historist...

Weber recognized explicitly that his concept of ideal-type is directly borrowed from economic theory and as it is commonly admitted from the German-speaking 'marginalist school'. Nevertheless, the construction of ideal-types reminds greatly the definition of economic rationality made by John...

Bagehot wrote on the methodology of Ricardian political economy some years after the appearance of marginalism. The purpose of this paper is to examine and evaluate his methodological positions. Bagehot made some significant contributions concerning the nature of economic explanation, the...

A strong critical movement emerged in the mid 1860s based on Auguste Comte's idea of a unified social science. Presented here is the debate over the independence of political economy vis-a-vis the other branches of social science, between Frederic Harrison and John Kells Ingram on the one side,...