Many different carriers operating on the same route is usually regarded as a signal of a competitive setting and, therefore, as a situation potentially beneficial for customers in terms of lower prices. This is obviously true if the argument involves a comparison between different market forms...

A recent exchange between the late Mark Blaug and Heinz Kurz and Neri Salvadori on the relevance of Sraffian economics (and a significant amount of more orthodox approaches, for that matter) does not seem to offer conclusive arguments, mainly because both contenders share some outmoded...

This collection of eminent contributions discusses the ideas and works of Mark Blaug, who has made important and often pioneering contributions to economic history, economic methodology, the economics of education, development economics, cultural economics, economic theory and the history of...

In economics, models, rather than theories, seem to be the fundamental units of appraisal and practitioners seem to hold in high esteem the criterion of ‘robustness’. In this paper we shall try to explicate the multifarious notion of robustness, and articulate it on three different...

Air travel routes and high speed rail connection between Milan and Rome after the Alitalia crisis This paper analyses the first available data about changes in passenger traffic and air/rail fares after the Alitalia crisis and the substantial reduction of the travel time between Milan and Rome,...

We investigate the different ways in which the results of theoretical models can be ‘robust’. We identify three kinds of ‘robustness’: (1) robustness to changes in the model’s idealisations; (2) robustness to changes in the ‘background’ conditions; (3) robustness to changes in the...