This paper submits that while David Hume and Adam Smith are presumed to be founders of modernism in philosophy and economics they already were what now would be deemed post-modern. It outlines Hume’s concept of ‘the reflexive mind’ and to …
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Posted for review 29 Jan 2013
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Due to a precise definition of comparative advantage and a deeper understanding of the logical interrelationships between this proposition and the two other main elements in David Ricardo’s famous numerical example in the Principles – the classical rule of specialization …
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Posted for review 29 Jan 2013
Unpublished
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It is, I think, interesting to compare the views of E. F. Schumacher and J. M. Keynes on the ethical aspects of economics – both the economic systems of which they were a part and economics as a subject. Both …
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Posted for review 18 Dec 2012
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Adam Smith takes a stand that clearly differs from that of the doctrinaire liberalism that would take shape in the first third of the 19th Century. He does not imagine that social life takes place in a neutral, politically aseptic …
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Posted for review 17 Dec 2012
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This paper shows that Marshall’s theory is generally equivalent to Walras’s one. It shows that Walras used two types of demand functions: (1) the original (ordinary) demand curve (function); and (2) the derived (general) demand function. Marshall also used both …
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Posted for review 14 Nov 2012
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Adam Smith rejected Mandeville’s invisible-hand doctrine of ‘private vices, publick benefits’. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments his model of the ‘impartial spectator’ is driven by not by sympathy for other people, but by their approbation. Approbation needs to be …
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Posted for review 6 Sep 2012
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For much economics research, ethics committee approval is not required. This is seen by some as indicating that there are no ethical issues in economics research. However, ethical research requires more than simply meeting regulatory requirements. If economics research has …
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Posted for review 6 Sep 2012
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Within the discussion of ethics and economics some have considered designing a code of ethics for economists. But the idea of such a code is potentially problematic from a pluralist standpoint. Some possibilities are discussed here to show that any …
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Posted for review 6 Sep 2012
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This paper is the written version of a verbal presentation to the 2011 conference of the Association for Heterodox Economics, held at Nottingham Trent University, 6‐9 July 2011. It presents the case for the ethical scrutiny of the economics profession, …
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Posted for review 6 Sep 2012
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This paper examines the ‘concrete analogies’ underpinning the ontological commitments of dominant conceptions of ethics, politics and economics to show that the content of economics is implicated in conceptions of ethics, and that these conceptions cannot be separated from questions …
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Posted for review 6 Sep 2012
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A Good Society needs to be built on an economic system that differs significantly from the current finance capitalist models around the world. In light of the claim of personal freedom, emancipation and choice within and through a Good Society, …
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Posted for review 6 Sep 2012
Unpublished
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The difficult dialogue between human rights and business shows that neither the adoption of codes of conduct nor the enforcement of legal norms would overcome the supposed incompatibility of ethics and economics. Such a general supposition is the effect of …
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Posted for review 6 Sep 2012
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The paper starts distinguishing between two kinds of economic practice: theoretical practice (TP) (model and theory building) and direct economic practice (DEP) (the practical operation upon real economies). Most of the epistemological and philosophical considerations have been directed to the …
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Posted for review 4 Sep 2012
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As recent newspaper headlines show the topic of patents/patent laws is still heavily disputed. In this paper I will approach this topic from a theoretical-historical and history of economic thought – perspective. In this regard I will link the patent …
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Posted for review 28 Mar 2012
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Forecasting involves an underlying conceptualization of probability. It is this that gives sense to the notion of precision in number that makes us think of economic forecasting as more than simply complicated guesswork. We think of it as well-founded statement, …
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Posted for review 28 Mar 2012
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In this paper the use of mathematics in economics, and the way in which mathematics contributes, or not, for economics to realise its potential as a science, will be discussed, by comparing two approaches to mathematics, a deductivist (algebraic) approach …
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Posted for review 28 Mar 2012
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The monetary theories in Philip Cantillon’s The Analysis of Trade (1759) differ in important respects from those found in Richard Cantillon’s much more famous Essai sur la nature de Commerce en général (1759). Contrary to the received opinion that the …
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Posted for review 17 Jan 2012
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The widespread and long-lived failings of academic economics are due to an overreliance on largely inappropriate formalistic methods of analysis. This is an assessment I have long maintained. Many heterodox economists, however, appear to hold instead that the central problem …
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Posted for review 17 Jan 2012
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10 comments
The paper argues that the notion of Pareto efficiency builds on two normative assumptions: the more general consequentialist norm of any efficiency criterion, and the strong no-harm principle of the prohibition of any redistribution during the economic process that hurts …
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Posted for review 13 Jan 2012
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The value of rational choice theory for the social sciences has long been contested. It is argued here that, in the debate over its role, it is necessary to distinguish between claims that people maximise manifest payoffs, and claims that …
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Posted for review 13 Jan 2012
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