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...

Despite being conceived as a ‘theory of rational choice’, orthodox economics fails to ascribe to human beings the ability to choose in a meaningful sense, something philosophical approaches to economics have long noted and tried to remedy. Tony Lawson’s critical realism is one attempt at a...

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...

This article offers a monetary analysis of Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS) and examines both their moral and economic significance as well as the way in which these two aspects may conflict. After considering LETS' principles and history, I review three monetary theories in order to...

This paper explores recent developments in the chartalist theory of money, and looks, in the first section, at the consequences of taxes for the development of markets and monetary exchange. Contrary to Ludwig von Mises's contention that chartalism be acatallactic, I argue, using both...

This paper examines Amartya Sen's notion of 'commitment' in light of Geoffrey Brennan's recent discussion thereof. Its aim is to elucidate one type of commitment which consists in following social norms. To this end, I discuss Sen's 'apples' example from his 'Rational fools' essay (section 2)....

In this paper, I consider the influence of political competition on opinion. After reflecting on the notion "opinion" as a concept in the economic analysis of politics, I turn to Hayek's Constitution of Liberty and consider his argument for democracy on the grounds that it is the form of...