Abstract: In Hayek's early writings on business cycle theory and the Great Depression he argued that business cycle downturns including the steep downturn of 1929-31 were caused by unsustainable elongations of capital structure of the economy resulting from bank-financed investment in excess of...

This paper examines the views of Hyman Minsky and Abba Lerner on the functional finance approach to fiscal policy. It argues that the main principles of functional finance were relatively widely held in the immediate postwar period. However, with the rise of the Phillips curve, the return of the...

This paper is an exploration of the genesis of Paul Samuelson's Foundations of Economic Analysis (1947) from the perspective of his commitment to Edwin B. Wilson's mathematics. The paper sheds new lights on Samuelson's Foundations at two levels. First, Wilson's foundational ideas, embodied in...

This paper translates F.A. Hayek's informal capital theory into a dynamic equilibrium model. The focus is restricted to Hayek's largely unrecognized contribution in "Utility Analysis and Interest", published by The Economic Journal in 1936, being restated in "The Pure Theory of Capital", first...

The origins of “capital fundamentalism” – the notion that physical capital accumulation is the primary determinant of economic growth – have been often ascribed to Harrod's and Domar's proposition that the rate of growth is the product of the saving rate and of the output-capital ratio....

It is widely accepted that the importance of Friedman's Presidential Address to the American Economic Association lies in its criticism of policy based on the Phillips curve. However, it is argued that a reading of the text does not support such a view, and this and other considerations suggest...

The business cycle theory of Friedrich A. Hayek offers an explanation for the onset of the Great Depression that is more complete than those of his contemporaries, including Gustav Cassel. Hayek sought to explain why the boom of the 1920s ended in the bust of 1929. In the 1930s, Hayek's theory...

Friedman's Presidential Address to the American Economic Association is compared with a slightly later lecture he gave to the American Philosophical Society. The earlier piece is found to be poorly structured, badly argued, and full of clear mistakes. The later one, although pursuing the same...

F.A. Hayek essentially quit economic theory and gave up the phenomena of industrial fluctuations as an explicit object of theoretical investigation following the publication of his last work in technical economics, 1941's The Pure Theory of Capital. Nonetheless, several of Hayek's more...

Robert Neild (born 1924) has made a major contribution to economics and to peace studies. This paper provides a brief sketch of Neild's life and work. While noting his research in economic policy and peace studies, this essay devotes more attention to his largely-unnoticed contributions to...