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...

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...

The aim of this paper is to explain what philosophical commitments drove mainstream professional economists to understand their own discipline as leaving no space for ethics (including virtue) between, say, 1887 and 1971. In particular, it is argued that economics embraced a technocratic...

'What are the economic lessons from Mahanthma Gandhi’s independence leadership in India' was a question directed to me in the 'All Expert’s' Economic Forum. This question was unique and leads to the integration of a social achievement in the foreground, with its economic implications in the...

Jon Elster gehört zu den profiliertesten Sozialwissenschaftlern der internationalen 'scientific community'. Der vorliegende Beitrag entwickelt eine Lesart für sein bisher vorliegendes Gesamtwerk: In einem ersten Schritt wird Elsters Kritik an funktionalistischen Fehlschlüssen in den...

In the first edition of the Wealth of Nations, published in London in 1776, the author-works list is presented in a very unusual place: directly opposite the table of contents. That placement suggests a continuity and unity in Adam Smith’s published works. A photograph provides a touchstone to...

Kenneth Boulding's AEA presidential address argued that economics is a moral science. His view derived from his general systems theory thinking, his three systems view of human society, and his early contributions to evolutionary economics. Boulding's argument that economics could not be...

Ronald Coase (1910-2013), who sadly died at the remarkable age of 102, made significant contributions to economics based on common sense and the detailed study of his topics. Coase was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1991 “for his discovery and clarification of the significance...