In 1481 when King John II ascended to the throne of Portugal, it was on the verge of bankruptcy. A quarter of a century later, Portugal all but ruled the world, economically and scientifically – at least. This article seeks to investigate the policy decisions of King John II and his successor,...

This article shows how the network structure of economic expertise can influence the diffusion of ideas and economic policymaking in times of crisis. Applying social network analysis, we analyse the networks of economic policy advice in the United States and Germany around the Council of...

A year after I started this project under the auspices of the Flynn Grant from Georgetown University's Center for German and European Studies it is finally finished, and only then because of the invaluable assistance of numerous kind individuals. In Cologne, Germany, the Institut für...

The paper sketches some features of Caffè’s contribution to the construction, diffusion and applications of economic policy as a discipline, in addition to his personal traits and his qualities as a teacher. Not only was he one of the main proponents in Italy of the study of welfare economics...

This essay reexamines the great contributions made by Dr. Ali Al-Gritly to Egypt. He was the finance minister for a short period at the beginning of the 1950s and later was appointed as chairman of the Bank of Alexandria. In 1966, he completed a book (Al-Gritly [1966 (1974)]) on the economic...

«Reflexiones sobre el estado actual del comercio de España» —Reflections on the current state of commerce in Spain— was anonymously published in 1761. At the time both the treatise and its author, the merchant Simón de Aragorri, were well known. Nevertheless, the work vanished for...

Over the last twenty years, law and economics has effectively internalized behavioral critiques of its assumption of individual rationality. By contrast, it has failed to appreciate the implications of growing challenges to the other crucial pillar on which it is built: methodological...

Kornai's autobiography presents an interesting perspective of the intellectual environment of a Central European country of real socialism such as Hungary, from the Stalinist after-war years to the progressively more relaxed, but still constraining, atmosphere of the sixties and later. Of...

This paper was prepared for a symposium about Erwin Dekker’s (2021) recent biography of the Dutch economist Jan Tinbergen, with attention to Tinbergen’s work as a development economist in the post-war era. Tinbergen’s “uniqueness” among other development economists is discussed, as...

In the second edition of his methodological Essay, Lionel Robbins attributes a significant role to uncertainty, dynamics and the time element. Understanding the motives that led to these revisions may offer important clues to assess what happened to political economy ever since, and how far...