Between 1830 and 1860, Germany provided the world with some of the pioneers of marginalism. Johann Heinrich von Thünen and Hermann Heinrich Gossen are shining examples. Then German theory declined. The center of German-language theory shifted to Vienna, and from 1885 to 1930 the German academic establishment, dominated by the Historical School, was virtually cut off from the progress of mainstream economics. Things began to change around 1930; German economists started again to make original contributions. By the end of the war, they had provided Germany with a solid link to the mainstream. Except for Erich Schneider, nobody contributed as much to this development as Heinrich von Stackelberg.

One of the pivotal moments in the move toward mathematizing economics occurred at the turn of the twentieth century, with Leon Walras as perhaps its most ardent champion. Yet, there is no small irony here, in that the leading French mathematicians to whom Walras turned to buttress and defend the case for a mathematical economics, especially Henri Poincare and Emile Picard, laid out reservations to the scope of this mathematizing program. They even pointed to matters, including the hold of the past on future events and hysteresis, a subject already in the discourse of mathematical physicists, which might have fashioned economics differently from the neoclassical mold being formed. This alternate pathway, though, was not pursued at the time.

In his widely read and cited History of Economic Analysis (Schumpeter 1954), Joseph Alois Schumpeter dismissed Adam Smith’s Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Smith 1976a) in a blunt and often ad hominem manner. In fact, he even questioned Smith’s intellectual mettle. We argue that Schumpeter’s assessment might have resulted from his failure to appreciate the rhetorical structure of Smith’s masterpiece (and the highly political character of its Book V), a failure possibly due to Schumpeter’s not having access to student notes of Smith’s lectures on rhetoric that surfaced only after Schumpeter’s death. We argue that Schumpeter’s failure to appreciate the rhetorical structure of Smith’s masterpiece is a prominent example of the consequences of not taking into account Smith’s rhetorical strategies and principles when trying to understand the man and his oeuvre.

This article examines the literature on the periodical recurrence of economic crises up to the 1840s, illustrating how awareness of this phenomenon was far more widespread than the few existing histories of business cycle theories indicate, that observations of this phenomenon began much earlier than previously documented, and also that early writers were more interested in emphasizing the intermittent return of crises rather than their precise timing.

William Stanley Jevons (1835–1882) was one of the great Victorian polymaths. His published writing spans chemistry, meteorology, geology, astronomy, geometry, physiology, political economy, sociology, logic and the philosophy of science. The extraordinary range and volume of this output was not the result of dabbling in the tradition of the Victorian “gentleman scientific amateur.” Dependent in large part on extensive experimental practice, Jevons's work was published in prominent physics journals and his Principles of Science (1874) was considered by one physicist to be a state of the art summary of scientific method and principles (Clifford, 1875, p. 480). Jevons's versatility was evident throughout his life. His article on “reflected rainbows,” which drew on a controversy in art and optics, was published in the month of his death.

When I first began the serious study of the history of economic thought, my presumption was that one should always start at the beginning. This was some thirty-five years ago and I have been finding so much interesting material that I have had a hard time getting past Adam Smith. The search for the beginning, of course, led me to the question of what do we mean by economic thought and how do we define it for the purpose of identifying its origin?.

Does neoclassical economic theory embody a specific politics? A century of uneasy bromides have done little to seriously clarify the issue, perhaps because of a tendency to confuse the various levels of specificity at which an answer might be tendered and defended. At its most abstract and general, the response must surely be: a few equations imperfectly cribbed from rational mechanics need have no special affinity with any political position whatsoever, as long as sufficient ingenuity is expended in their interpretation and elaboration. Yet, at a slightly less elevated level, the question as to whether individual neoclassical economists put forth arguments that supported various political programs cannot be answered in any other manner but the airmative. Walras thought it underwrote a limited conception of state ownership of land; Pareto thought it resonated with a sour cynicism about the circulation of elites; Hayek began by thinking it helped explain an anti-statist position; Milton Friedman believed it the economics of Dr. Pangloss. But this raises the further question: Is there anything intrinsic to the doctrine that biases it toward one political orientation or another? This question can only be addressed at the very specific level of individual cultural formations at well-demarcated historical junctures.

There are three different interpretations of Adam Smith’s trade theory in modern literature: first, the neoclassical theory of absolute advantage; second, an interpretation based on increasing returns; third, an interpretation of uneven development. These interpretations come to widely different conclusions, especially considering the development of the pattern of trade in Smith’s theory. I discuss how these three interpretations emerged. They do not stem from a more detailed analysis of Smith’s works itself but reflect changes within international trade theory. They all result from the fact that economists have imposed nineteenth- and twentieth-century modes of thoughts on Smith’s theory, forcing his writings into later-developed theoretical frameworks. In contrast to classical economists in the nineteenth century, these subsequent interpretations misrepresent Smith’s trade theory in order to portray him as a forerunner of later theories. The differing interpretations can thus be explained only against the backdrop of the development of international trade theory.

The government of Margaret Thatcher forms a revealing case study of how economic ideas become entwined with the political and economic history of any country where attempts are made to apply them. As each of the papers in this symposium points out, Thatcher and her government became inextricably associated with “monetarism.” They were influenced by a range of economists, including Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, but the policies that went under the label of monetarism ended up being very different from what one would expect from reading the academic literature on monetarism. Though it shared important features, Monetarism came to mean something very diferent from, for example, Friedman's quantity theory. More significantly, the meaning of monetarism and the way it was applied changed signi cantly during the government's period in office. Many of these changes were in response to specific economic problems that the government was forced to confront. To understand the way economic ideas developed, and why monetarism was interpreted in the way it was, therefore, it is important to understand the macroeconomic history of the period. That is the purpose of this paper.

Spanning sixty years, from 1927 to 1987, Gunnar Myrdals work is both extensive and diversified. Aside from theoretical economics, it embraces many other fields such as sociology,

The Modern Archives, King's College, Cambridge University contain a carbon copy of a three-page single spaced manuscript with the title “A Passage From The Autobiography of an Analytical Economist” (RFK/16/2/134–139, hereinafter “Autobiography”). Joan Robinson's initials are typed at the end of the document, which is dated October 1932.

In October 1932, Heffer, the Cambridge University student bookstore, published Joan Robinson's methodological pamphlet, Economics is a Serious Subject, and she delivered the manuscript of The Economics of Imperfect Competition to Macmillan (Joan Robinson to Richard Kahn, October 30, 1932, RFK/13/90/1/19). The Autobiography was apparently drafted shortly after these two projects were completed. The typescript in Modern Archives, which seems to be the only extant copy, was not made until some months later. In a letter of March 2, 1933, Kahn suggested adding “a long section to your secret document if you can do so without spoiling it,” regretting that he had not asked her for a copy (RFK/13/90/1/162–67). She replied somewhat mysteriously, alluding to a superstitious reluctance to having it typed but admitting that eventually it would have to be done (March 23, 1933, RFK/13/90/1/205–208). Since the carbon copy refers to page 275 of her book, the Autobiography was not typed until she had seen the final set of page proofs, and perhaps not until the book had appeared.

Here is a fact that seems to surprise many deeply learned scholars. The term “dismal science” was applied to British political economy as the 1840s ended because of its role bringing about the emancipation of West Indian slaves in the 1830s. This paper addresses the consequences that follow from our ignorance of the role of classical economic theory in the anti-racial slavery coalition of Biblical literalists and utilitarians.

More than England and other states, the German principalities were, in the pre-industrial period, hampered by silver outflow and persistent pressures on the balance of payments, which led to idiosyncratic models and strategies of economic development usually but not entirely helpfully called “Cameralism.” It is less well understood how Cameralism, as a policy of order and development, and monetary theory went together. The present paper will sketch these working mechanisms as well as provide a few angles for new perspectives and future research. A first section after the brief introduction studies general issues of development in relation to balance-of-payment constraints (II), followed by the discourses on whether the domestic currency ought to remain stable in terms of intrinsic (silver) value (III), or whether it may be debased so as to raise domestic exports and competitiveness (IV). Both options were considered, at times and by varying actors, as valid strategies of promoting economic development, especially export-led growth, although most contemporaries viewed coin debasement as harmful to the economy. A fifth section discusses an alternative to the aforementioned strategies, that of raising effective monetary mass through increasing velocity. Since the Middle Ages and into the nineteenth century, the German economic tradition had a clear understanding of how velocity could be managed and the common weal stimulated by an increase in “vivacity” of circulation (V). In hindsight, it appears that we find here a powerful program towards promoting economic development and Europe’s rise towards capitalism. A conclusion will offer some thoughts for further research (VI).

For Adam Smith, a crime is not the result of a rational calculation of loss and gain but the consequence of envy and a vain desire to parade wealth to attract the approbation of others, combined with a natural systematic bias in overestimating the probability of success. Similarly, Smith does not conceive of legal sanctions as a rational deterrent but as deriving from the feeling of resentment. While the prevailing approach of the eighteenth century is a rational explanation of crime and a utilitarian use of punishment, Adam Smith instead builds his theory of criminal behavior and legal prosecution consistently on the sentiments. A well-functioning legal system is thus an unintended consequence of our desire to bring justice to the individual person, not the result of a rational calculation to promote the public good, just like a well-functioning economic system is the unintended consequence of our desire to better our own condition, not the result of a rational calculation to promote public good.

The prevailing opinion among John Maynard Keynes's interpreters is that, in writing The General Theory, Keynes ignored the other “revolution” which was taking place in Cambridge at the time, the critique of Marshallian microeconomics which led to the development of the notion of imperfect competition.

In promoting spontaneous orders—orders that evolve in a process of cultural evolution—as “efficient,” “beneficial,” and “advantageous,” Friedrich A. Hayek (1899–1992) has often been attributed the belief that there is something desirable about them. For this reason, he has been accused of committing the naturalistic fallacy, that is, of trying to derive an “ought” from an “is.” It appears that Hayek was quite aware of the charge, and vigorously disputed it: “I have no intention to commit what is often called the genetic or naturalistic fallacy” (1988, p. 27).

Smith was influenced by Newton’s method. Nonetheless, he introduced elements that led him far from the Newtonian perspective. The present essay analyzes how historical dimensions, contingencies, institutions, and conflicting human inclinations modify a Newtonian horizon. Finally, the paper focuses on how, in Smith’s view, institutions determine “unintended outcomes,” which are sometimes opposed to those of the market. In this sense, the “invisible hand” is not only the result of the behavior of myopic individuals trying to improve their conditions; it is also the outcome of the work of institutions that operate as structures autonomous with respect to individuals.

The resurgence of neo-Schumpeterian theories and models of technological innovation and development1 is an enduring sign of the historical significance of Joseph A. Schumpeters theoretical works on the dynamics of economic change as a result of long-term technological change.

Free trade and protectionist doctrines have long had ambiguous relationships to bilateral trade deals, known throughout the nineteenth century as “reciprocity” arrangements. Henry C. Carey, “the Ajax of Protection” in the nineteenth-century United States, embodies the ambiguity from one side of the controversy. Carey’s early adulthood in the mid- to late 1820s was a time when the forerunners of the Whig Party pursued reciprocity at least partly as a means of fostering protection. In the 1830s, Carey, too, endorsed reciprocity—because he stood for free trade and believed reciprocity would promote it. In the 1840s and 1850s Carey changed his mind, decided that protection was the real “road to perfect freedom of trade,” and for that reason opposed reciprocity with Canada. In the 1870s he remained a protectionist but reconciled his doctrine with reciprocity. This article attempts to explain the changes in the disposition toward reciprocity of America’s foremost protectionist thinker from the Second Party System to the generation after the Civil War.