The purpose of this chapter is to link Ronald Coase's methodological approach to what he ‘learned' when he was at the London School of Economics (LSE) from Edwin Cannan and Arnold Plant. The main lesson Coase taught us and insisted upon was that economics should not be too ‘abstract' and...

Jim Buchanan kept pictures of Knut Wicksell and Frank H. Knight on his office wall. Yet a careful look at Buchanan's work indicates that it ran counter to that of Frank H. Knight. Knight and Buchanan disagreed on the methodological, economic, ethical, and political assumptions that drove their...

Recent literature on Adam Smith and other 18th Scottish thinkers shows an engaged conversation between the Scots and today's scholars in the sciences that deal with humans — social sciences, humanities, as well as neuroscience and evolutionary psychology.We share with the 18th century Scots...

My paper reconstructs the path of German economist Friedrich A. Lutz (1901−1975) to American economics. The correspondence with his former teacherWalter Eucken, the founder of the Freiburg School, constitutes a crucial and yet unexplored source for the paper. Through Lutz's case, I demonstrate...

Throughout his career, James Buchanan displayed a remarkable consistency regarding the didactic role of the properly trained economist. As he would say, it takes varied iterations to force alien concepts upon reluctant minds. What he regarded as the role of the properly trained economist is just...

This paper discusses how Mark Blaug reversed his thinking about the historiography of economics, abandoning rational reconstructions for historical ones, by using an economics of scientific knowledge argument against Paul Samuelson and others that rational reconstructions of past ideas and...

This paper examines Mark Blaug's position on the normative character of Paretian welfare economics: in general, and specifically with respect to his debate with Pieter Hennipman over this question during the 1990s. The paper also clarifies some of the confusions that emerged within the context...

This article explains two enigmas related to the scientific career of Thomas C. Schelling, Nobel Price in Economics 2005: How to explain his capacity to always produce new ideas? Why have his multiple pioneer ideas had more impact on other social sciences and not on economics? The paper proposes...

Allyn Young's lectures, as recorded by the young Nicholas Kaldor, survey the historical roots of the subject from Aristotle through to the modern neo-classical writers. The focus throughout is on the conditions making for economic progress, with stress on the institutional developments that...