Eminent Economists Research Articles

Behavioural assumptions in Nassau Senior's economics

Behavioural assumptions in the form of psychological and/or socio-economic human motives in examining and explaining economic phenomena, situations and trends were used by the time of the mercantilists. A leading figure in this methodological approach, particularly during the classical period, was Nassau Senior. In the present article, after presenting relevant ideas and arguments in regard to special human behaviour employed by some outstanding authors before Senior, the analysis is directed towards exploring the role of the two main motives that he stressed: the motive for variety, and the motive for distinction. It is concluded that Senior deserves a tribute for developing an important framework of the various influences of specific human behaviour on some economic variables. Behavioural assumptions in the form of psychological and/or socio-economic human motives in examining and explaining economic phenomena, situations and trends were used by the time of the mercantilists. A leading figure in this methodological approach, particularly during the classical period, was Nassau Senior. Whilst other classicists used behavioural assumptions in their writings, such as wealth and profit motives, Senior elaborated on the behavioural assumptions much more and influenced later eminent economists, such as Jevons and Marshall. More specifically, Jevons (1871, pp. 40, 53-4; see also White, 1992, pp. 69-70) used Senior's 'Law of Variety' to justify his theory of the 'variation of the final degree of utility'. Marshall (1890, pp. 73-5, 77, footnote 1, 89-90; see also Chasse, 1984) was directly influenced by Senior in the formation of his analysis of human wants and its effects on the elasticity of demand and economic growth. This recognition of Senior's behavioural approach prompted us to study his ideas and arguments in relation to the role of various human motivations in economic structure and growth. In the first section we present relevant ideas and arguments in regard to special human behaviour employed by some outstanding authors before Senior. We then direct our analysis towards exploring the role of the two main motives that he stressed: the motive for variety, and the motive for distinction. These behavioural

Free Trade: Risks and Rewards

Free Trade provides a historical framework for ongoing discussion of economic and environmental issues. While there is empirical evidence on trade flows - they increased dramatically in both directions - the debate on related issues continues. The impact of free trade on jobs and manufacturing productivity, the effectiveness of dispute settlement, the growth of foreign direct investment, the absence of adjustment programs, and the consequences for social programs are all issues for spirited discussion. Many of the leading actors in shaping both the FTA and NAFTA participated in the conference, including former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, former President George Bush, former U.S. Treasury Secretary and Secretary of State James Baker, former Canadian Trade Ministers John Crosbie and Michael Wilson, former U.S. Trade Ambassadors Clayton Yeutter and Carla Hills, as well as former Mexican Trade Minister Jaime Serra Puche. Other senior officials included Canada's Derek Burney and Simon Reisman. Donald S. Macdonald, chairman of the landmark Royal Commission that recommended the leap of faith of free trade, gave the keynote address. A Royal Bank of Canada impact study, Two Cheers for the FTA, provided a baseline for discussion by a panel of eminent economists from all three NAFTA countries, and strong defences of positions against free trade included presentations by Andrew Jackson of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), Jim Stanford of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), and Gerald Larose of Quebec's Conseil des syndicats nationaux (CSN). Participants from the provinces included former Ontario Premier Bob Rae, while NAFTA and the environment were considered by a panel led by former Quebec Premier Pierre Marc Johnson and joined by Quebec Liberal Leader Jean Charest. Other participants included Jean Anderson, Laurent Beaudoin, Fernando Clavijo, Thomas d'Aquino, William Dymond, Francis Fox, Jonathan Fried, Michael Hart, Stanley Hartt, Richard Lipsey, Victor Lichtinger, John McCallum, Peter McPherson, Jacques Menard, William Merkin, Simon Potter, Charles E. Roh, David Schorr, Charles Sirois, Guy Stanley, Yvonne Stinson, Peter Watson, William Watson, L.R. Wilson, and Paul Wonnacott. Free Trade: Risks and Rewards is an important reminder of why the issue was so passionately debated at the time and why it remains important.

The Anti-Semitism of Some Eminent Economists

Research Article| November 01 2000 The Anti-Semitism of Some Eminent Economists Melvin W. Reder Melvin W. Reder Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google History of Political Economy (2000) 32 (4): 833–856. https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-32-4-833 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Melvin W. Reder; The Anti-Semitism of Some Eminent Economists. History of Political Economy 1 November 2000; 32 (4): 833–856. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-32-4-833 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsHistory of Political Economy Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Duke University Press2000 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Private-property rights, erroneous interpretations, morality, and economics: Reply to demsetz

Professor Harold Demsetz and I have been involved in an intellectual dispute which has taken place over several years. I can hardly have a better debating partner. He is easily amongst the half dozen or so most eminent economists who has not (yet) won the Nobel Prize in this discipline. To say that his contributions to the theory of property rights, regulation, law and economics, to mention only a few of the areas on which he has focused his attention, are highly regarded within the profession would be a vast understatement. Most important of all to me, he is one of the very few eminent economists who has been willing to engage me in intellectual combat.

Europe's Eminent Economists: A Quantitative Analysis

This paper considers the European countries' output of eminent economists, i.e. the 160 most often cited academics in the period 1993-96. The influence of the size of the population and GNP is analyzed, and a ranking of the top-20 scholars is provided. The United Kingdom outperforms: it is leading with respect to the absolute number, per capita, and GNP per capita. More surprisingly, most small countries do very well if size is accounted for. The four large Continental countries only do well according to the absolute number of eminent economists. But weighted by population and GNP they chop back dramatically.

Who's who in international business education and research

This directory provides information on research interests of the most eminent economists and consultants engaged in international business education and research. The main listing in the book is alphabetical by name and the information is indexed for ease of reference. The book develops a select sample of 150 leading scholars and practitioners extracted from a sample of at least 1200 in the field. The sample is drawn from the use of multiple selection criteria reflecting research productivity, citational analysis, executive officers and fellows of AIB, management of US-based CIBERS and peer-based nominations. These indicators highlight contributions to professional and institutional development. The compilation is also distinctive in that it allows respondents to offer a personal statement on the principal contributions they have made to the field of international business.

Outstanding Female Economists in the Analysis and Practice of Development Economics

This article examines the contributions of five eminent economists, all women, to the analysis and practice of development economics. Irma Adelman, Frances Stewart, and Nancy Birdsall are leading advocates of alternative development strategies that focus on poverty alleviation and investment in human capital. Anne Krueger and Alice Amsden stand at the forefront of two opposing camps in a lively and long-lasting debate on the appropriate role of government in trade and industrialization. We use the storied careers of these economists as a vehicle to convey the big picture of how development economics has evolved and which topics have proved durable.

The Challenges of American Hegemony

'This terrible century, has - or appears to be having - a happy ending,' wrote the historian, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr, recently.(f.1) This is certainly true for the United States. Consider the events of the last decade: the Soviet Union surrendered and then crumbled; victory in the 1990-1 Gulf War sent television images of American military might across the globe; American ideas about free markets and democracy appear largely unchallenged; American companies and culture are spreading into every nook and cranny of the world; and the American economy is the envy of all. Henry Luce's prediction about the American century might be up for a hundred-year extension. Not surprisingly, in this season of triumph, polls of United States foreign affairs and security experts, journalists, scholars, religious leaders, scientists, governors, mayors, business executives, congressional staff, and labour leaders reveal that more than two thirds of these 'American influentials' are satisfied with 'the way things are going in the world' - a world that half of them see as decisively under United States leadership.(f.2)What a difference a decade makes. Ten years ago, the American elite's estimation of the world and their country's place in it could not have been more different. Though the Soviet Union and its nuclear arsenal still loomed large, the real fear was what the elite saw as America's decline. Foreign policy failures in Vietnam and Iran had eroded America's self-confidence and its image in the world at large. The economy was widely considered dysfunctional, plagued by a fiscal deficit of nearly US$300 billion, the declining competitiveness of its exports against cheaper, high quality goods from Japan, and a seemingly better organized corporate sector in Europe.Japan and Germany, it was thought, had hit upon a better brand of capitalism than America's wild west version, more oriented to longterm growth and endowed with checks and balances that would prevent such catastrophes as the stock market crash that hit the United States in 1987 or the savings and loan crisis that cost American taxpayers between $200 billion and $500 billion. And with the United States engaged in an arms race against Moscow (with a price tag in the hundreds of billions), Japan and Germany were free to focus on economic competitiveness.(f.3) The national debt was approaching $4 trillion - interest payments alone were approaching 15 per cent of total government spending. Throughout the 1980s, the growth in gross domestic product (GDP) averaged only 2.69 per cent, continuing a slowdown that had begun in the mid-1970s.Even by the late 1980s, when it was clear that the Soviet Union was on its last legs, American elites believed that bipolarity would give way to a multipolar order in which the United States would be, at best, first among equals. In fact, as late as 1991, 71 per cent of leading Americans believed that the country's problems had become so insurmountable that the United States had 'decline[d] as a world power.'(f.4) In this atmosphere of pessimism, the question was not 'if' America declined; it was not even 'when,' which everybody thought would be soon. It was 'who' - as in, who would take over when America was gone? Lester Thurow, the eminent economist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, foresaw a 'tripolar world built upon Japan, the European Community, and the United States.'(f.5) In a 1986 essay ominously titled 'Pax Nipponica,' the distinguished scholar, Ezra Vogel, wrote that 'future historians may well mark the mid-1980s as the time when Japan surpassed the United States to become the world's dominant economic power.'(f.6) Again, American elites seemed to agree; 63 per cent said Japan posed a 'critical threat' to the United States, 41 per cent said Europe did - with a particular emphasis on Germany.(f.7)What went wrong - or rather right? The pessimism of the late 1980s made four important and instructive errors in the perception and measurement of national power. …

Barbara Bergmann: Scholar, Mentor and Activist

This is a short biography of Barbara R. Bergmann, an eminent economist and one of the founders of the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE).

Retrospectives: Classical Family Values: Ending the Poor Laws as They Knew Them

Poor law reform in the early 1830s provides a key example of the deep conflicts between classical liberal principles of self-reliance and the realities of dependency. Eminent economists, such as Nassau Senior and Thomas Malthus, argued that the dependency of women and children calls forth and motivates its own support from the altruism of husbands and fathers. Like modern welfare reformers, the classical economists asserted the natural necessity and sufficiency of such dependency and ignored its powerful implications for the intergenerational perpetuation of a highly illiberal inequality of opportunity.

Introductory remarks to ?are museums betraying the public's trust??

"Classical Article" Reprint Series The purpose of this series is to make accessible articles written in the early days of the economics of the arts which are out of print or otherwise difficult to obtain. There is a significant early literature in the field that originally appeared in a spread of publications, and is not well known. These "classic articles" demonstrate the quality of the written heritage of cultural economists and are an excellent benchmark against to evaluate intellectual progress in the subject. We have invited a hum ber of eminent economists to write a brief introduction to each reprint.

Democracy as a Cure for Famine

1. Democracy and Famine It has been persuasively argued that wars do not occur between democracies (cf. JPR, vol. 29, no. 4, 1992). Since apart from the war the greatest killers have always been internal conflicts, destructive governance and famine, it is pertinent to examine the role that democracy can play in their prevention. Democracy implies the existence of societal institutions which exercise checks and balances on government. One of the most important of these checks and balances is the free flow of information, with that vital component, the free and independent press. The assumption here is that free speech, access to information and a free press allow the actions of governments to be monitored and the voice of the people to be heard. Recent research, especially that concerning the independent media in former Yugoslavia, suggests that it is virtually impossible for a government to wage war in the absence of popular support. It is not surprising that one of the first actions of a nondemocratic leader is to control the flow of information and especially the press. Thus begins the insidious practice of propaganda whereby the people, on a massive scale, are forced to believe what the government wishes and where the conditions necessary for perpetrating such injustices as war and famine are established. The eminent economist Amartya Sen (1994) has asserted that famine cannot occur in a democracy, or more specifically in a country with a free press. At its simplest, Sen's argument implies that gross disadvantage such as widespread death from lack of food would not be allowed by a democratic government in which the press can and probably would make it an issue of immense public concern. Thus, Sen indicates independent media as the cornerstone of democracy. But is it the democratic nature of a government which guarantees food for the starving, or is it the free media which enforce it? In other words, is famine preventable in a centrally controlled economy even if there is no tradition of a free press? The answer would appear to be no, because the equitable and adequate distribution of available food is entirely dependent on the whim of government. Thus, there is no accountability, and governments will easily sacrifice the needs of the less powerful for their own political purposes. Nowhere was this more clearly seen than in the Soviet Union under Stalin during the 1930s. Massive and strictly enforced collectivization caused a major famine in the Ukraine, yet Stalin continued to export the grain stocks that a less autocratic leader would have diverted to the starving at home. As many as 10 million peasants may have died as a direct result of Stalin's policies during these years. Famine is not the same thing as starvation, although one usually leads to the other. Famine can be described broadly as a series of increasingly desperate actions by people to obtain food. It is a social phenomenon which has profound and long-term disruptive effects on communities. Thus, famine is a so-called 'long-onset disaster' with a varying but usually quite long period of early warning during which preventive action is possible. At least 2

Inaugural Address

Professor Syed Nawab Haider Naqvi, Distinguished Participants, Ladies and Gentlemen: It is a great privilege for me to inaugurate the Ninth Annual General Meeting of the Pakistan Society of Development Economists (PSDE) and exchange ideas with eminent national and international economists, planners and scholars. It is a source of great satisfaction to note the contribution of PSDE to enhance knowledge in the area of economic development in Pakistan and abroad. Since its formal inception in 1983, the Society has grown in many ways-it has broadened its scope as well as gained in-depth, and has also attained the stature of a prestigious international forum, which provides an opportunity to outstanding scholars, policy-makers and economists to shed light on new ideas. The Society and its office bearers deserve our congratulations on conducting their affairs in such a competent and constructive manner.

Making markets: economic transformation in Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet states

The collapse of communism in Europe and the former Soviet Union has produced one of the most daunting tasks of the twentieth century: the construction of market economies out of the wreckage of central planning. While there is a lively debate among economists on this transformation, little has reached a non-specialist audience. In Making Markets, Shafiqul Islam and Michael Mandelbaum call on four eminent economists to summarize the state of current thinking. Richard Portes, Centre for Economic Policy Research in London, surveys the process of transition, examining its primary features and the problems that will be faced in light of Western economic theory and international economic practice. Paul Marer, Indiana University, gives a detailed account of the transition already underway in Central Europe. Robert Campbell, Indiana University, discusses the special problems confronting the Soviet Unions successor states, particularly Russia. Jeffrey Sachs, Harvard University and adviser to the Russian and Polish governments, considers the role of the West, citing episodes in economic history in which external support made success possible.

Philosophical Pattern Comparisons among Eminent Economists

This paper offers philosophic comparisons based on the autobiographical essays on the life philosophies of twenty-two of the 1930's generation of eminent economists. The contributing economists are examined from the perspective of their conceptions of human nature, society, and justice, and technique which involves normative valuation, the openendedness of economic behavior, and the overmathematization of the discipline.

Eminent economists: their life philosophies

Eminent economists: their life philosophies

Schumpeter: a biography

This widely admired intellectual biography of Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950) follows his career from his immensely creative and productive youth in Austria-Hungary to the strange depressions that plagued him during his later years and to his intellectual triumph as one of the great economists of the twentieth century. skillfully blends narrative with a thoughtful and knowledgeable evaluation of Schumpeter's major contributions to economics, history, sociology, and political science. Richard Swedberg's biography of Schumpeter thoughtfully uncovers different layers of the eminent economist's personality...A lucid, readable study.--The New York Times Book Review There are comparatively few intellectual biographies of genuine sociological interest. Swedberg's new study of the Austrian social economist Joseph Schumpeter stands among the very best...Swedberg has done a magnificent job of bringing Schumpeter's achievement back to center stage.--Robert Holton, American Journal of Sociology Swedberg has produced a unique and inspiring book which is a must for anyone interested in Schumpeter's personality as well as in his rich set of ideas. --Esben Sloth Andersen, Journal of Economic Literature Swedberg, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Stockholm, is the coeditor, with Neil J. Smelser, of The Handbook of Economic Sociology(Princeton).

The Making of the 1930s Generation of Eminent Economists

Discussion of scientific progress in science philosophy texts suggests that aggressiveness and selfishness on the part of scientists is associated with high productivity. It is argued that the behaviour that appears to be the most improper actually facilitates the manifest goals of science. This article shows that the making of the 1930s generation of a sample of eminent economists was shaped by a high sense of co‐operation; continuing collaborative contact in the form of dual authorships of books and articles, joint teaching assignments, and review and support of each other′s writings, but very little of the intensive, relentless competition one finds among natural scientists. The difference stems not so much from the fact that economics is a soft science, but rather from the degree of maturity of the discipline. The 1930s generation of economists was fortunate to enter the field at a time when it was ready for its take off.

Intertemporal issues in international macroeconomics

Recent work in macroeconomics in general, and in international macroeconomics in particular, has emphasized the need to base such models on firm microeconomic underpinnings. Essentially, this has come to mean that the underlying behavioral relationships are derived from some form of intertemporal optimization by representative agents, with particular attention being devoted to ensuring that the equilibrium is consistent with the intertemporal resource constraints facing the individual and the economy. While it is fair to say that macroeconomic theory is increasingly being carried out within this type of framework, there are eminent economists who remain skeptical of what this approach has to offer. This view is expressed most forcibly by Riidiger Dornbusch, who in the introduction of his recent collection of essays writes: ‘Although much of policy-oriented open-economy macroeconomics stands unproved, I am impressed with near-complete sterility of the intertemporal approach in the face of actual policy issues. Perhaps as it matures in the hands of some of the excellent scholars now working in that mode, it will come to yield a richer harvest.’ This special issue of the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control is devoted to studying intertemporal issues in international macroeconomics. There are two features to the intertemporal approach which those who adopt this framework find to be attractive. First, by deriving the model from underlying microeconomic principles, much of the arbitrariness associated with macroeconomic modeling is eliminated. But the extent to which this is accomplished should not be overstated, since a good deal of arbitrariness inevitably still remains. The nature of the objective function, the range of decision variables, the specification of the constraints, all typically remain subject to choice. Secondly, by explicitly introducing some intertemporal measure of welfare, the intertemporal approach provides a natural frame-

CARS AND THE SOCIAL NETWORKS OF THE ELDERLY: THE CREATION OF DISADVANTAGE

The eminent economist Galbraith once argued that if you are poor, it is better to be poor in a poor society. His argument was that in a poor society, systems such as the transport system were based on the needs of the poor; in a rich society, where car ownership rates are high, the poor find their needs are not met. By extending this argument, it is possible to hypothesize that the elderly who are a minority in our society, albeit an increasing one, have their transport needs often overlooked, and their rights in this area denied. The focus of this paper is an examination of transport patterns with reference to the lives of the elderly. It is argued that the elderly in our society are one group with reduced access to the motor car. In a society based on the motor car, this results in an induced dependency. Further their social networks are weakened and their social power correspondingly reduced. This paper uses survey data and secondary data sources to examine the limited access of the elderly to motor cars and ways in which this affects their social networks.