William Vickrey, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1996, was a moral and brilliant man. His major contributions to economics came from his desire to advance ways to decrease waste through creative pricing. The economic areas where he had the most impact are congestion pricing, tax reform...

Italian Abstract: Mosca, Ruffini ed Einaudi vennero da molti riconosciuti come “Maestri di libertà”, soprattutto in virtù della loro strenua difesa della libertà durante il consolidamento del regime fascista. In questo articolo miro a ricostruire l’idea di libertà che emerse nelle loro...

This is a pre-publication version of a full-length review of Kuhn, R. (2007) Henryk Grossman and the Recovery of Marxism. Urbana and U of Illinois. Please cite as Freeman, A. 2008. ‘The Discontents of Marxism’. Debatte, 16 (1), April 2008 pp. 122-131

Considers the contribution of Attilio da Empoli to the theory of value and distribution and especially his contribution to the theory of monopolistic competition. During the 1920s a lively discussion developed about the link between the cost structure of the individual firm and the degree of...

This article aims to discuss an evaluation of the concept of paradigm of T. Kuhn in his representative work: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions ERC, [Ku96] and the complementary version by W. Stegmüller, Structure and dynamics of theories EDT, [Steg83]. This refined interpretation of the...

Over the past two decades, numerous contributions to the history of economics have tried to assess Paul Samuelson’s political positioning by tracing it in the subsequent editions of his famous textbook Economics. This literature, however, has provided no consensus about the location of...

The paper focuses on Manoilescu’s nomination as a Professor of Economics, Organization and Rationalization at the Polytechnic School of Bucharest in 1931 and his dismissal in 1944. The biographical sources include the archives of the institution.

Once economics came to be understood as the scientific investigation of the operation of markets, economic theorists pushed ethical and metaphysical concerns outside their realm of study. After the separation, the claims of Christian theology had no more jurisdiction over the discipline of...

Legal scholars and economists alike have been quite critical of F. A. Hayek’s legal theory. According to Richard Posner, Hayek’s legal theory is “formalist” and serves as a useless guide for legal scholars and judges. Alan Ebenstein claims that Hayek’s arguments in technical economics...

The Sensory Order (1952) is a work on theoretical psychology, which can be understood as an attempt to explain the relationship between cosmos and mind. By addressing these matters, Hayek established solid basis for his own ideas about economic knowledge and the problem to be solved by...