An Evolutionary Efficiency Alternative to the Notion of Pareto Efficiency
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...
View ArticleOn the Limits of Rational Choice Theory
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...
View ArticleDifferent Approaches to the Financial Crisis
The economic crisis has exposed shortcomings in standard economic theory and provided an impetus for new economic thinking. But the theoretical debate in the wake of the crisis has been unduly...
View ArticleRichard Cantillon's Early Monetary Views?
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...
View ArticleEconomics and Research Assessment Systems
This paper seeks to analyse the effects on Economics of Research Assessment Systems, such as the Research Assessment Exercise (or RAE) which was carried out in the UK between 1986 and 2008. The paper...
View ArticleMathematical Modelling and Ideology in the Economics Academy: competing...
The widespread and long-lived failings of academic economics are due to an over-reliance on largely inappropriate mathematical methods of analysis. This is an assessment I have long maintained. Many...
View ArticleEditorial Introduction to the First Issue of Economic Thought
In August 2011 Edward Fullbrook, the editor of the Real World Economics Review and the driving force behind the World Economics Association (WEA), asked the three of us to take on editorial roles in...
View ArticleForecasting, Prediction and Precision: A Commentary
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...
View ArticleWalter Eucken on Patent Laws: Are Patents Just ‘Nonsense upon Stilts’?
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...
View ArticleMathematics, Science and the Cambridge Tradition
In this paper the use of mathematics in economics will be discussed, by comparing two approaches to mathematics, a Cartesian approach, and a Newtonian approach. I will argue that while mainstream...
View ArticleSelf-interest, Sympathy and the Invisible Hand: From Adam Smith to Market...
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 not by sympathy for...
View ArticleAnd the Real Butchers, Brewers and Bakers? Towards the Integration of Ethics...
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...
View ArticleNo Ethical Issues in Economics?
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...
View ArticleOntological Commitments of Ethics and Economics
This paper analyses the cognitive image schemas structuring the ontological commitments of dominant conceptions of ethics and economics to show that the content of economics is implicated in...
View ArticleMissing Links: Hume, Smith, Kant and Economic Methodology
This paper traces missing links in the history of economic thought. In outlining Hume's concept of 'the reflexive mind' it shows that this opened frontiers between philosophy and psychology which...
View ArticleEconomics and the Good Life: Keynes and Schumacher
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...
View ArticleExpectations-based Processes – An Interventionist Account of Economic...
The paper starts by distinguishing between two kinds of economic practice: theoretical economic practice (TEP) (model and theory building) and direct economic practice (DEP) (the practical operation...
View ArticleAdam Smith's Republican Moment: Lessons for Today's Emancipatory Thought
This paper places Adam Smith within the long republican tradition, and offers an emancipatory reflection on the possible space of republican freedom within societies that harbour certain degrees of...
View Article