This article examines George Christopher Archibald's contributions to monopolistic competition theory, which he approached from multiple perspectives throughout his career. In the 1950s, he critiqued this theory for its vague definitions and for prompting several economists to abandon profit...

In welfare economics, the theory of second best is inextricably linked to an article by Richard George Lipsey and Kelvin John Lancaster, published in 1956 in the Review of Economic Studies. The publication of this article was encouraged by Harry Gordon Johnson, who was a member of the journal's...

This article identifies the two approaches to defining a book review. The first defines a book review as a text published in the 'Book Reviews' section of a journal. The second approach involves specifying criteria that a text must satisfy to qualify as a book review and assessing whether a...

Walter Andrew Shewhart is regarded as the founder of Statistical Quality Control (SQC), an approach to production inspection based on the application of statistical theory. He developed SQC in the 1920s while working at Bell Telephone Laboratories. During this period, he was tasked with training...

This article examines the career of American economist Robert Dorfman (1916-2002), marked by pioneering work on linear programming in the 1950s, interdisciplinary research on water management in the 1960s, and contributions to environmental economics in the 1970s. It identifies his main...

This article examines the functions of book reviews in economics. Since most book reviews provide a description, an analysis, and an appraisal of a book's content, their first function is to highlight the book's existence, encourage or discourage readership, and offer post-publication peer...

We argue in this article that constant-quality models like the one used to derive the Alchian-Allen effect are of very limited use in the analysis of the regulation of repugnant goods (morally contested goods ranging from human organs to sex work, pornography, and surrogate motherhood). The...

We trace the origins of the definition of the "quality variable" used in the theory of product differentiation, which states that quality is unanimously appreciated by consumers, entails a higher unit cost for firms, is unidimensional and continuous. We also document the transition from a...

In demand theory, the "characteristics approach" refers to situations where goods are described according to their characteristics. This approach is often contrasted with the "goods are goods" approach. We trace the origin of this expression back to a critique of demand theory formulated by...

This article examines the role of the nomenclature assumption in demand theory, defined as the assumption that the choice set available to economic agents is considered as given, without requiring an explanation of its origin. After reviewing existing definitions of this assumption, this article...