We define applied economic history as the systematic use of historical reasoning to address economic policy problems. Building on work in applied history, we argue that economic history contributes to policy not by offering ready-made lessons, but by disciplining the narratives and analogies...

The 40th birthday of the Schumpeter Society offers an excellent chance to reflect on Schumpeter intellectual heritage, as well as its shortcomings and the subsequent developments. No doubt that reference to Schumpeter has been a precious shortcut to the rediscovery of the crucial importance of...

This paper examines how applied history can contribute to policymaking when understood as a way of structuring judgement under uncertainty rather than as a source of policy lessons or predictions. It argues that economic history is particularly well suited to facilitating this role because it...

We describe Aristotle's mathematical model of weighted voting to explain and implement decision-making in democracies, oligarchies and the mixed states that combine elements of both systems. This model, originally presented in textual form, extends the known history of social choice theory back...

This handbook takes stock of ‘degrowth’, a concept and movement gaining increasing visibility in the 2020s. Contributors explain contexts for degrowth’s significance, elaborate its diverse history and detail its unique approaches, practices, challenges and potential futures. Part I sets...

Kurt W. Rothschild, an Austrian economist known for his multiparadigmatic and interdisciplinary approach, made significant contributions to Keynesian and post-Keynesian economic theory. Born in 1914 in Vienna, his work encompassed price theory, labor market economics, growth and distribution,...

This article posits that Heraclitus' work constitutes a somewhat underappreciated foundation in the study of socioeconomic thought. It then differentiates his perspective from earlier economic thought in ancient societies and critically examines the surviving fragments of his work. The...

According to a widely shared view, the development of demand theory in the first half of the twentieth century was heavily influenced by the anti-psychological attitudes of economists. I call this view 'anti-psychologist thesis,' and I criticize it on several grounds. I propose an alternative...

This factsheet provides an overview of this European Universities alliance, including on its partners, focus areas, vision and activities undertaken. It relates to the pioneering new learning opportunities across borders developed by the alliance, the innovative European inter-university campus...

This factsheet provides an overview of this European Universities alliance, including on its partners, focus areas, vision and activities undertaken. It relates to the pioneering new learning opportunities across borders developed by the alliance, the innovative European inter-university campus...

Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.Following on from The Hand Behind the Invisible Hand and A Realist Philosophy of Economics, this new book drawn from Karl Mittermaier's writings examines the intricate relationship between economic theory and real-world economic...

This work offers the first comprehensive comparison between the philosophy of Adam Smith and that of his successor, Thomas Reid. It looks at Reid's and Smith's remarkably similar accounts of human perception and judgement, and at their different moral and economic theories. In this way, this...

As with many philosophers of the modern period, Smith's thought was highly influenced by the advent of modern, Newtonian physics as well as by the so-called mechanistic worldview. However, the adoption of this theoretical paradigm leads to an aporia, i. e., to a fundamental problem, within...

In the Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith argued against the account of human nature which views moral sentiments as deriving from self-love. This paper emphasises that Smith's understanding of human nature was not that it was either selfish or benevolent. Human nature consists of the ability to...

Commentators often follow David Ricardo in looking, especially, at chapters Vand VI of Book I of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations as the place to find his theory of value. And most commentators attribute to Adam Smith some versions of a labor theory of value. But in those chapters, Smith is...

Based on some of Carl Menger's publications, his estate and archives, this article examines how the Austrian School relates to the thought of Adam Smith. Was Menger an heir of Smith, as Gustav Schmoller, leader of the German Historical School and Menger's arch-enemy, insinuated? Was there indeed...

On the 300th anniversary of his birth, one thing can be said about Adam Smith: entire libraries (real and digital) have been filled with analyses of his thought. This trend does not seem to be on the verge of ending soon. Everybody hopes to uncover the "real Smith." This article has a more...

How can we better understand the relationship between capitalism and democracy today? This article challenges the prevailing "independence thesis" that views capitalism and democracy as separate and often antagonistic systems. By revisiting Adam Smith's integrationist approach to political...

"Adam Smith's science of the legislator and the "virtues of the statesman" are understood as a kind of higher order-liberalism, coming close to what Colander and Freedman call "the liberal methodology" pertinent to the role of economics in policy-making. Evolving socio-economic heterogeneities,...

In his Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith lays out an account of ethics based on reflected passions towards our neighbours. I argue that this account can inform theories of intergenerational justice. Existing approaches implicitly focus on claims of justice between generations, not...

This article treats Smith's writings on patriotism and universal benevolence in the final edition of The Theory of Moral Sentiments by placing them in some broader contexts. Smith affirmed proper patriotism as virtuous and consistent with the Christian ethic of universal benevolence. Proper...

"The data from text digitization show that "liberal" acquired a sustained political signification for the first time around 1769: the liberal policy principles of Adam Smith and his associates. The bodies of evidence include: (1) the non-occurrence in English prior to 1769 (with a few...

This article examines the interpretation of Adam Smith's writings in The Birth of Biopolitics, where Foucault delves into market processes, the government's role, the nature of economic knowledge, the dynamics of the "invisible hand," and the complex relationship between society and the state....

Der in der Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Jena aufbewahrte Nachlass der Publizistin Edith Eucken-Erdsiek enthält reiches Quellenmaterial zu den weltanschaulichen Debatten der Weimarer Republik, zu Leben und Werk von Walter Eucken und zur Geschichte des Ordoliberalismus zwischen...

Keynes's Principle of Effective Demand is widely recognized not only as a major theoretical innovation but also as one of the core concepts uniting various post-Keynesian strands. However, Keynes's own treatment of the Principle of Effective Demand - known as the Z/D model and identified by...

Early on Sunday morning, February 20, 1955, Friedrich Hayek and his wife Helene arrived at the airport in Cairo, Egypt, where he was greeted by the Director of Research of the National Bank of Egypt, Dr. Nikoli Koestner. Beginning the next evening and over the subsequent days, Hayek gave four...

This paper examines the inflationary episode of 1603 in Spain through the lens of Austrian Economic Theory. The study focuses on the effects of monetary expansion caused by the influx of precious metals from the Americas and its impact on real wages and raw material prices. Through the analysis...