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...

Purpose – This paper aims to evaluate critically the validity of rival theorisations of the hidden economy that variously read this sphere as a leftover from a previous era, a by-product of a new emergent form of capitalism, a complement to formal employment or an alternative to the formal...

Purpose – This paper is devoted to the question of what motivates man in his pursuit of economic activities. Particular attention is given to the notion that economic activities of individuals may not be motivated by their self-interest alone. Design/methodology/approach – Using literary...

This paper is a review essay of Leeson, R. (Ed.), Keynes, Chicago and Friedman (2 volumes), Pickering and Chatto, London, 2003. These volumes contain a comprehensive collection of previously published papers, and also some interesting new materials, relating to the controversy about the accuracy...

Purpose – To analyse some proposals of the Younger German Historical School as to how to reduce unemployment and to examine them with regard to their application to contemporary unemployment. The more general issue of this paper is: Can we learn from the Younger Historical School how to solve...

Purpose – To establish the place of Karl Knies in the history of economics of the German-speaking academics. Design/methodology/approach – Knies's economics teaching is summarized on the basis of a student's notebook of the course on general economics in Heidelberg, 1886. Knies's relation...

The aim of the paper is to point out some investigation lines which might result useful in building-up a theory of the firm based on its resources, capabilities and competences (RCC). While the focus on RCC has helped to address some limitations of the standard contractual paradigm, a positive...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to reconstruct economic reasoning on entrepreneurship from the perspective of its institutional content, thus underlining the aspects of power relations and leadership, which are related with the organisational and technological dimensions of innovation...

Allyn Young was, and continues to be, a much misunderstood economist. He was a profound thinker and so much ahead of his times that it is doubtful that even today we have grasped the full import of what he said. This paper examines Young's thinking from the perspective of five different schools...

Purpose – This paper is an attempt to sketch the influence of the German Historical School on the development of Russian economic thought at the boundary of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and, particularly, on the forming of its socio-ethical trend with an alternative approach in...