Economic Writings Research Articles

John Locke on Just Price:

Locke’s short essay, “Venditio,” offers a series of thought-provoking examples of prices that might or might not be viewed as just. Locke writes as though these examples and his comments about them point to a coherent doctrine about which agreed-to prices are morally acceptable and which are morally unacceptable. However, despite the acuity of some of Locke’s observations, no such coherent doctrine emerges from Locke’s discussions of these examples. Indeed, many of the conclusions Locke reaches as he moves from example to example are implausible in themselves or inconsistent with one another. Nevertheless, not all is lost. Locke’s observations can be viewed as thought experiments on his part which, in conjunction with insights from Locke’s other economic writings, indicate what features a doctrine of acceptable and unacceptable prices needs to possess. I show how a line of argument which appears almost as a sidebar within “Venditio” offers a doctrine that provides those needed features. That doctrine affirms both “the common law of traffic” and “the common law of charity” and a view about when the latter takes priority over the former.

Economía y (como) ficción en la Inglaterra del siglo xvi: usura, depreciación, inflación y circulación del capital

The present work stems from the analogies/homologies existing between the linguistic and the economic realms, which are ontologically considered as similar: systems of symbolic representation sharing similar dynamics of meaning production and retrieval. These similarities become apparent already in the 16th century, when the first early modern (proto) economic writers examine such notions as usury and money lending; debasement; inflationary processes; and the various approaches to money circulation and accumulation. It will be argued that these processes were not only examined by 16th century proto-economic authors, but they also articulated various aesthetic and literary productions, mostly in drama and poetry of the 1500s.

PROBABILITY, PRUDENCE, DANGER: THOMAS AQUINAS ON THE BUILDING OF THE LEXICON OF RISK

The Latin terms commonly used to signify “risk” are absent from Thomas Aquinas’s economic writings. Instead, Aquinas offers a lexicon of probability, prudence, and danger. This ternary lexicon brings with it a triple universalization of risk: first, a universalization through activity, including the activity of analysis considered as part of economic activity; second, a universalization through the agents, since everyone—the observer, the co-contractors, the prince, and the population—is affected by the risk; and, third, a partial universalization of its definition, since the lexicon indicates a risk that is not yet restricted by calculation, as the modern notion is, although some distinctions are already made by Aquinas. However, the lexicon describes only a risk of loss and does not take into account chance of gain.

Traditional and Modern Aspects in Ion Ghica's Economic Writings

Traditional and Modern Aspects in Ion Ghica's Economic Writings

The Rise of Dutch Neo-Calvinist Political Economy, 1830–1905

The years 1904–5 seemed to mark the birth of neo-Calvinist political economy in the Netherlands. It was then that three jurists affiliated with the Free University of Amsterdam, an institution founded by the theologian Abraham Kuyper, published their first economic writings. This article deals with the rise of neo-Calvinist political economy, which mirrored the emergence of Catholic economic thought that took place in precisely the same period, and seeks to explain where the ideal of this religious approach to economics came from. It describes the awakening of a socioeconomic commitment in Dutch Réveil circles, the influence of Thomas Chalmers's Christian political economy on the antirevolutionary statesman Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer, and the place of economics in Kuyper's neo-Calvinist worldview. It is shown that Groen van Prinsterer's desire to infuse economic science with biblical views was eventually replaced by Kuyper's vision of formulating a full-fledged Calvinist alternative to mainstream economics. Despite some attempts at Calvinist political economy at the dawn of the nineteenth century, this project never really got off the ground.

Social Class: Key Concepts in Modern Western Society and How to Measure Them

Background: Social class tends to be downplayed in modern societies and is now rarely studied, but the argument can be made that social class is still strongly present and sociologically and psychologically important. Purpose:The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the nature of social class in modern western society and to distinguish it from the concept of socio-economic status, or SES, and also to distinguish subjectively perceived social class. Method: The method consists of a broad literature review encompassing academic writings in sociology, economics, and social psychology as well as national survey evidence from the U.S.A., the U.K., and the author’s home country, Australia. Results: Social class is shown to be dependent these days mostly on the occupational prestige of the head of household and much less on income as measured in SES. The present paper offers an updated measure of occupational prestige for assigning social class membership, and argues that instead of SES we should be using a purely economic measure of income and assets. Lastly, perceived social class is what mainly affects social behavior, and this paper identifies the main cues that people use to signal social class to others. Conclusions: Social class remains a very important determinant of behavior in modern western society but its key concepts and their measures need to be updated.

Salvation into Nation: Topic Modeling Early Modern Economic Writings

Early modern economic thought is often left out of histories of economic thought, but it was an important inflection point in the development of the modern science of economics. Using network clustering and topic modeling, this research describes the subjects covered in the economic literature of the early modern era and how they change over time using a sample of 2,353 economics texts written from 1550 to 1700s. Topic modeling of the corpus produces sixty-six distinct topics. These topics are clustered using network science methods that reveal five main themes: trade, politics, travel, religion, and husbandry. Longitudinal analysis of the prevalence of topics shows increases in politics and decreases in travel, religion, and husbandry. The results also allow a more precise sense of when those shifts take place than has previously been established, implying that computational methods hold great promise for revealing new information and insights about the evolution and transformation of economic thought over time.

Схоластика в экономической науке как симптом неизбежного кризиса

An academic text being described as ‘scholastic’ is usually perceived as a criticism, pointing to the text’s formal, dogmatic character. This characteristic was used from time to time in relation to the works of social scientists in the USSR. This term is much less common in modern academia, including the discussion of modern economic writings. This does not mean, however, that many of these papers do not deserve to be described as such, given the ever-increasing number of publications. The article puts forward a hypothesis that there is a connection between the scholastic style of reasoning and the construction of economic texts, signifying the onset of a crisis in economic research, accompanied by a transition to a full-scale socio-economic crisis. This hypothesis is being tested on the basis of two historical precedents — medieval scholasticism proper and the political economy of socialism. In both cases, the term ‘scholastic’ was applied relatively frequently to published texts. In addition, during the periods of feudal or Soviet scholasticism, the dominant role was played by religion or, in the case of the Soviet Union, ideology and its dominance was also reinforced by power hierarchies. While in the case of feudalism it was the Vatican that held the ‘monopoly on truth’, in the USSR this role was played by Marxism-Leninism and the Politburo of the CPSU. In the case of the Middle Ages, the authors use Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologia as the main object of discursive analysis and as for the Soviet period, the analysis focuses on the monograph Political Economy — Theoretical Foundation of the CPSU’s Policy published in 1989 by Soviet theoretical economists. Along with these sources, we also look at the works of A. Greif and E. Gaidar, showing a critical discrepancy between the scholastic discourse and economic reality.

Heroic Illusions of Nature in Revolt: Luxemburgian Ecosocialism between William Morris and the Book of Exodus

ABSTRACT Historians have long demarcated between the public, political, and economic writings of revolutionary socialist Rosa Luxemburg and her personal affinity for plants and animals. This article, however, discovers and articulates a Luxemburgian ecosocialism across her work. This paper argues that Luxemburg interpreted nature as possessing its own order that resists the imposition of capitalist and imperialist (dis)orders. Luxemburgian ecosocialism, therefore, lies between the appreciation of beauty one finds in the Marxism of William Morris and the active participation of nature in the historic revolt against imperialism one finds in the Book of Exodus. According to Luxemburgian ecosocialism, that which unites Luxemburg's letters and Herbarium to her Die Akkumulation des Kapitels is a confidence that empires overextend themselves in their exploitation of human beings and nature, and that the natural order accordingly fights back. Beyond Luxemburg, this paper emphasizes the importance of fiction and illusion for ecosocialist storytelling, and argues for an ecosocialist vision that takes as its starting point not the elitism of aesthetic preference but radical forms of solidarity with suffering creation.

Disposable World(s): Race and Commerce in Defoe's Captain Singleton

Abstract: In this essay, I examine Daniel Defoe's less well-known castaway novel, Captain Singleton (1720), in order to show how his fiction at once dramatizes and interrogates the view of colonial commerce he champions in his economic writings. I begin with the claim that Defoe presents a view of economic plenitude premised on the universal disposability of the world's resources—including persons, places, and things. According to this perspective, an object's utility derives from its capacity to be repositioned or repurposed in a new or different context. Captain Singleton translates this theory into fictional form, but in doing so it also reveals features of Defoe's thinking that were obscured in his economic writings. By juxtaposing acts of collective ingenuity and resourcefulness with acts of racialized enslavement, the novel suggests that each could be understood as operations of a commercial system that disregarded the meaning or integrity of individual lives and local sets of relations. I argue, finally, that the novel introduces a system of racialized enslavement whose function is to establish the relative worth of white humans—and their resistance to commercial disposability.

La grandezza delle capitali nel dibattito dei riformatori illuministi: Napoli, Parigi, Londra, by Giorgio Simoncini

The debate over the size of Europe’s rapidly growing capital cities was one of the most interesting of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The two capitals which had grown most rapidly were Paris and London: both are estimated to have had more than 500,000 inhabitants by 1700, though London had surged ahead by 1800. In third place came Naples, Europe’s largest city in the sixteenth century, which remained strikingly populous despite being ravaged by plague in 1656; by the 1730s, when it became the capital of an independent kingdom, its population was once again close to 300,000. (If anything, as Jan de Vries showed in European Urbanization 1500–1800 [1984], Naples was an exception to all patterns across this period, a genuine historical puzzle.) Debate prompted by such growth was increasingly grounded in political economy, and intersected with other issues high on the intellectual agenda in the eighteenth century, notably the luxury question. Contributors included economic writers, philosophers, social commentators, government officials, urban designers and architects, many of them associated with the Enlightenment. The classic treatment of the debate, focused on Naples but covering contributions from Paris, London and elsewhere, remains Franco Venturi’s 1971 essay, ‘Napoli capitale nel pensiero dei riformatori illuministi’, in Volume VIII of the Storia di Napoli.

A Philosopher’s Economist: Hume and the Rise of Capitalism by Margaret Schabas and Carl Wennerlind

Reviewed by: A Philosopher’s Economist: Hume and the Rise of Capitalism by Margaret Schabas and Carl Wennerlind Ryu Susato Margaret Schabas and Carl Wennerlind. A Philosopher’s Economist: Hume and the Rise of Capitalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020. Pp. xv + 328. Cloth, $45.00. Hume scholarship in the history of economic thought has advanced since Eugene Rotwein’s 1955 collection Writings on Economics: David Hume, later reprinted with a new introduction by Margaret Schabas (New York: Routledge, 2006). However, as Schabas and Carl Wennerlind correctly observe, “There is as yet no monograph in English devoted to a [End Page 513] comprehensive study of Hume’s economics, let alone one that connects this body of thought to his philosophical tenets” (xiii). Hence the motivation for the two eminent historians of economic thought, both of whom have specialized in Hume for a long time, finally to put out an excellent and readable book on Hume’s economic thought. Chapter 1, a survey on Hume’s biography, claims that Hume had a lifelong interest in economic phenomena. Chapter 2 deals with Hume’s methodology in economics. Chapters 3 to 6 focus on individual but closely related topics, such as Hume’s ideas on property, moral effects of commerce, and his theories of money and credit. Chapter 7 surveys Hume’s influence on the history of economics. Schabas and Wennerlind are both specialists in Hume’s economic thought but work on different aspects of it. Schabas focuses on the methodology of economics and its relationship with that of natural science, whereas Wennerlind is more concerned with Hume’s monetary theory and the credit system in mercantilism. They make the best use of their respective interests to draw a broader picture of Hume as a philosopher-economist. At the same time, it is interesting that Schabas and Wennerlind record their “separate interpretations” (154–58) of Hume’s understanding of the specie-flow mechanism. This proves not only the authors’ academic honesty but also the richness of the possible interpretations of Hume’s economic writings and his philosophical texts. Potential readership is not limited to Hume scholars or specialists in the history of economic thought; the book will also appeal to readers interested in the relationship of philosophy and the social sciences, including economics, and in methodological issues. Moreover, this publication is all the more meaningful because of the further diversification and compartmentalization of economics. This book reveals that Hume’s economics may provide a fresher perspective than Adam Smith’s as regards the challenges of contemporary economics. This is because Smith’s Wealth of Nations laid the groundwork for modern economics as a discipline, whereas Hume’s economic, political, and historical writings, though seemingly unconnected and unmethodical, have resonated with the interests of recent economists in newly developed and related domains such as game theory or behavioral economics. As Schabas and Wennerlind note, “In sum, many of the efforts by mainstream economists since the late twentieth century to reclaim a more nuanced account of human behavior are to a large extent retrieving insights that were evident to Hume” (18). On some points, Philosopher’s Economist is a welcome counterpart to James A. Harris’s Hume: An Intellectual Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), both being excellent contributions to recent Hume scholarship. Harris’s Hume devotes space to Hume’s political economy but emphasizes the independence of each phase in Hume’s intellectual career. Accordingly, Harris carefully criticizes the conventional overemphasis on Hume’s proclamation of the supreme importance of the “Science of MAN” in his Treatise. On the other hand, Philosopher’s Economist reemphasizes the continuity and unity of Hume’s philosophy that permeate all his writings, including Political Discourses, by highlighting his strong and continual belief in “the epistemic standing of the moral sciences” rather than in that of the physical sciences (64). One of the numerous strengths of this book is the authors’ comprehensive attention to not only Hume’s major works, but also his minor works, letters, and unpublished manuscripts. Schabas and Wennerlind have duly evaluated Hume’s so-called Early Memoranda, which contains many extracts from various sources on politico-economic issues. The authors even mention Sister Peg...

Smith or Malthus? A Sea‐Change in the Concept of a Population

AbstractThis two‐part article offers a critical appreciation of Malthus's political economy of population to mark the bi‐centenary of his Principles of Political Economy (1820). His general economic theory emerged after the first four editions of his famous Essay, in three steps: (1) a rapidly produced series of essays on tariffs, rents, and capital mal‐distribution (1814–1815); (2) consequent revision of the economic basis of the Essay (1817); and (3) formal statement in the Principles. His main economic writings thus belong to a later, more mature period of his work, and their evolution is of particular interest for demography on three counts. One is that his rethinking was stimulated directly by the need to rectify serious deficiencies he had come to recognize in the Essay. Second, this makes his later thought of more direct interest to today's study of population and development. Third, all three steps began in, and were sustained by, dialogue with Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. The dialogue led to further thinking beyond the Essay, with major innovative developments. Comparison to the Smithian baseline shows (1) that the familiar stereotype of Malthus as prophet of population‐laden disaster is seriously incomplete; and (2) capital distribution replaces population distribution as a mechanism of growth, inducing a radical change in the concept of population.

Divine Providence in Early Modern Economic Thought

Divine Providence in Early Modern Economic Thought

Camera Obscura or the Way Things Appear: Some Remarks About Marx’s Economic Writings

I analyse the foundations of Marx’s analysis to examine the applicability of Marx’s theory of the capitalist economy to the study of current economic events. In this paper, I do not present critique the interpretations of Marx’s works made by contemporary economists; however, much of modern Marxian economics is invalid in terms of Marx’s own method and inappropriate for understanding modern capitalism. The paper is concerned with topics that have been the subject of contemporary debate and are central to Marx’s own economic writings. Here I present only textual evidence of the main tendencies in the development of capitalism discovered by Marx. There are limits to value (= time) as the sole criterion of economic expediency; the constant reproduction of a scarcity of jobs amid an abundance of goods; enlargement of material commercial relations on the other spheres of social life; development of monetary relations – the emergence of derivatives of money, i. e., ersatz money, digital money. The main conclusion that I came to is that some societies are gradually losing value and moral guidelines, threatening the very development and even the existence of other communities or peoples.

The Political Economy of S. N. Bulgakov (to the 150th anniversary of his birth)

Introduction. 2021 marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of S. N. Bulgakov, an outstanding Russian scientist, economist and philosopher. The aim of the study is to assess the scientific contribution of S. N. Bulgakov to the development of Russian socio-economic thought. Materials and Methods. The work was written on the basis of the economic writings of S. N. Bulgakov, documents and materials of that era, as well as contemporary Russian and foreign publications. The article uses a dialectical approach, methods of induction and deduction, analysis and synthesis, structural-functional and program-targeted research methods. Results. The article reveals the scientific contribution of S. N. Bulgakov to the formulation and solution of urgent problems of the humanities and economics. The place and role of S. N. Bulgakov in the history of Russian and world science are revealed. The problems of the fundamental work of S. N. Bulgakov “Capitalism and Agriculture” (1900) and his other economic studies are considered in detail. An assessment is given to the ideas of the formation of a humanistic political economy, the doctrine of “Christian socialism”, the relationship between the principles of spiritual, moral and rationalistic approaches in the study of the national economy. The specific views of the scientist on the agrarian economy are shown: agrarian overpopulation, the nature of agricultural labor, the operation of the law of diminishing land fertility, the peculiarities of domestic agriculture, the nature of land rent. The idea of the legitimacy of the ideas and conclusions of S. N. Bulgakov about the nature and prospects of the development of capitalism in Russia, the spread of small and medium-sized forms of organization of agrarian production, understanding of the agrarian economy in the “broad” and “narrow” sense is substantiated. Discussion and Conclusion. A comparative analysis of the views of S. N. Bulgakov, N. I. Bukharin, K. Marx, V. I. Lenin, A. Smith, A. V. Chayanov on the general theoretical aspects of the development of agricultural production is carried out. Shown are modern studies devoted to the ideas of S. N. Bulgakov in the field of socio-economic analysis.

The revolution that did not happen: Terence Hutchison on the political economy of Jeremy Bentham

Abstract The three-volume edition of Jeremy Bentham’s Economic Writings, edited by Werner Stark, was published between 1952 and 1954, and reviewed by Terence Hutchison in the Economic Journal in 1956. Based on the Stark edition, Hutchison argued that there had been a dramatic shift in Bentham’s views and policy recommendations between his earlier and later writings on political economy. With the benefit of a new, five-volume edition of Bentham’s Writings on Political Economy, edited by Michael Quinn, it can now be seen that the revolution in Bentham’s views on political economy proposed by Hutchison did not take place. On the contrary, an examination of Bentham’s treatment of fiscal and monetary policy in his principal general works on political economy, the Manual of Political Economy and the Institute of Political Economy, show a remarkable consistency, both in policy recommendations, and in the body of economic analysis in which they were based.

‘Une image bien choisie qui fait bouillir les sangs’: Frédéric Lordon and the 2008 Financial Crisis

This article discusses the thought of the contemporary French philosopher and economist Frédéric Lordon and analyses his responses to the 2008 global financial crisis. The key focus is on a play in alexandrine verse that Lordon wrote about the crisis, D'un retournement l'autre: comédie sérieuse sur la crise financière (2011). The article contextualizes the play and situates it within Lordon's wider intellectual project, which draws on Marx and Spinoza to provide a political theory of affects. I compare the ways Lordon explains the derivative finance at the heart of the subprime crisis in both his play and his economic writings. My discussion centres on the concepts of affect and image in Lordon's attempt to explain the crisis to the public, in whom Lordon wants to inspire the desire for political change. I conclude by asking critically how useful Lordon's theory and literary work are in a time of crisis.

I Don't Always Teach the History of Economic Thought...But When I Do, I Prefer an NCAA-Style Tournament

I describe an assignment for a history of economic thought (HET) course, The Most Interesting Economist in History, modeled off of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. Students vote in head-to-head matchups between economic writers by era for whom they find to be more interesting and explain their reasoning behind their votes. This assignment promotes active learning and is a more fun way of juggling complex themes and a slew of writers over a semester-long seminar.

The first divide in György Márkus’s philosophical development

This paper systematises the works of György Márkus into two or possibly three periods. These emphasise the underlying consistency of purpose and interpreting theoretical interests throughout the oeuvre. despite the changing and socio-political forms and language games, all three share common features. These stages move from this initial critique of Orthodox Marxism employing the intellectual rigor of analytical and a philosophical anthropology to an investigation of the internal contradictions in Marx’s mature economic writings. to a final post-marxist phase after he left Hungary dominated by continual philosophical themes and a social democratic political perspective.