Henry George has many admirers, but only a few scholarly economists would regard him as one of their own. In this paper, I wish to argue not only that Henry George made a sound contribution to political economy; I also claim that his analysis is eminently significant for environmental economics today.

The story of the body of economic analysis that were initiated by Léon Walras can be divided into developments before and after 1930. During the period before 1930 there were two phases to the story. The first was the seminal achievement of Walras. The second was the refinements and extensions made by the generation of Walrasian theorists that followed him. During the period after 1930 the story is also divided into two phases. One is the work that has been done on the type of Walrasian model in which there are no disequilibrium transactions. The other is the beginning of work on the behavior of general equilibrium systems in which disequilibrium transactions and production occur. These phases will be sketched very briefly with the objective of giving a beginner's introduction to some major aspects of the history of general equilibrium theory.

Endres and Harper (2011) maintain that, within the Austrian tradition of capital theory, Carl Menger and Ludwig M. Lachmann form a distinguishable trajectory. Both these authors, they argue, consider capital as a heterogeneous structure of higher-order goods. In this comment, it is demonstrated that the opposite is true. Menger and Lachmann endorsed contrasting views on the nature of capital. Whereas Lachmann indeed adhered to a heterogeneous capital concept, Menger considered capital to be a homogeneous concept employed in economic calculation.

In March 1776 when Etienne Bonnot, abbe de Condillac, published Commerce and Government, he was sixty-one years old, the same age as Francois Quesnay when he first published on economics. According to Jacqueline Hecht he had been a habitué of Quesnay's entresol (1958, p. 252), and Nicholas Baudeau has referred to Condillac's close friendship with Quesnay (1776/1903, p. 443). A book aimed to present a complete account of political economy from one of France's most distinguished philosophers, a member of the Academie franchise (“the immortals”) and the Royal Academy of Berlin, was bound to arouse great interest.

Utilitarianism as conceived of in the present article is the philosophical movement that is roughly characterized by three main features: (1) during his lifetime a person maximizes his utility, which depends on his pleasure and his pain; (2) an individual's behavior should be based on a good education and guided by effective legislation; (3) society's ultimate purpose is the maximization of the aggregate happiness of all people.

The aim of this article is to describe the rise and fall of the workhouse system in connection with the developments that took place in economic thought in the transition from mercantilism to the Classical tradition. By examining the economic debate about wages, efficiency, labor market, workers’ mobility, and unemployment, we discuss whether the social policy shift epitomized by institutional reforms like the Gilbert Act (1782), the Rose Act (1793), and the Speenhamland system (1795) was accompanied and eventually inspired by a change in the perception of major political economy issues. In doing so, we review the writings of Jacob Vanderlint (d. 1740), George Berkeley (1685–1753), Malachy Postlethwayt (1707?–1767), Josiah Tucker (1713–1799), David Hume (1711–1776), and Adam Smith (1723-1790), among others. Although a direct influence by these writers cannot be proven, the originality of the present work rests on the effort to put into perspective the arguments elaborated by economic thinkers and the proposals made by social reformers so as to identify possible connections between economic theorizing and social legislation.

This article examines the way Vilfredo Pareto addresses the dynamics of social equilibrium and the evolution of economic institutions based on the principle of the rupture of the Machiavellian Moment. In the first part, we analyze why and how Pareto’s categories (residues, derivations, interests, \social heterogeneity, logical actions, and non-logical1 actions) borrow from those of Machiavelli (virtù, fortuna, corruptio, and ordine) to define various forms of the Machiavellian Moment. In the second part, we show that this borrowing allows Pareto to explain: (i) the evolution of political equilibriums, from the distinction the author makes between “Maximum of utility FOR a community in sociology” and “Maximum of ophelimity FOR a community in political economy”; and (ii) the alternative between free trade and protectionism.

The early 1620s trade crisis had a significant influence on the way public opinion in England regarded economic issues, and the pamphlets written during that period convey the impression that the supply of money was the undisputed primary concern of economic policy. However, monetary matters occupied a prominent position in the political agenda of England only during times of crisis, when the kingdom faced a perceived threat of demonetization. The paper argues that, during the first two decades of the seventeenth century, concern with a positive balance of trade was of only secondary importance, being normally overshadowed by a more fundamental goal: a well-ordered, stable, and properly managed trade. This opened the door for debates about the limits of free initiative and regulation in economic affairs, as evidenced most clearly by the debates about free trade and monopolies that permeated James I’s reign.

François Quesnay’s Tableau, as it appears in Philosophie rurale, is an understandable, robust, and innovative construction despite detail errors. It provides a precise representation of the economic circuit. We introduce the accounts of chapter VII of Philosophie rurale and we explain how Quesnay’s Tableau comes from these accounts. The transposition of the accounts of chapter VII and of the Tableau into two input-output tables shows the balance of resources and uses. In order to shed light on the progress of exchanges along the year, the Tableau is also transposed into three double-entry accountings (proprietors, farmers, and artisans).

Many authors have interpreted Nassau Senio's ideas on abstinence through the years to mean that a cause/effect relation exists between interest and abstinence and that interest is the reward for abstinence. Some typical examples of this treatment are as follows: “The original abstinence theory of interest for which Senior is famous has long been recognized as the most complete of the classical theories, and under various names has become incorporated in the general corpus of economic theory” (Bowley 1937, p. 137). “Nassau Senior…introduced the ‘abstinence theory’ of interest, and he is criticized both for its one-sidedness and for using it to imply that the ‘pain’ of the capitalist is in some sense proportional to the ‘reward’ he ‘earns’ by abstaining. On page 189 of Political Economy, Senior describes abstinence as the cause of interest in terms which would readily explain this general interpretation, and in his public-policy pronouncements he further supports it” (Conard 1959, p. 26). “Senior's contribution to capital theory was to identify this reward for ‘abstinence’ as interest, or the cost of waiting, during which time capital could be accumulated. Senior's description of interest as a return to abstinence was his most original contribution to economics, and it soon became assimilated into the mainstream of economic theory. In it he surpassed Smith, Malthus and Ricardo and his analysis of capital and interest stood as the most complete in British economics until the time of Jevons” (Ekelund and Hébert 1975, p. 103).

Nicolas Dutot (1684–1741) is an important figure for the history of economic thought, as a pioneer in monetary theory and price statistics, and for economic history, as a chronicler of John Law’s System. Yet, until recently, very little information about him was known, some of it incorrect. I present extensive research that reveals a remarkable career rising from humble origins and full of surprises. He spent his formative years in the ranks of the “ancienne finance” he was thought to despise, and then worked for the Chamber of Justice that he so decried in his writings, only to be sent to the Bastille for corruption. After working for Law’s Bank and then retiring quite comfortably, he continued to socialize with his pre-System financier and banker friends, at least for a while. He also joined a short-lived learned society and accumulated a substantial library that reveals much about his tastes and affinities. The portrait that emerges is at odds with the image of an honest accountant he tried to project, but also richer and more engaging.

In Wealth of Nations, a high rate of profit is associated with sluggish or even negative growth, and vice versa. This is because capital accumulation (and therefore population growth) is driven by parsimony of the masters; and the incentive to self-denial is eroded by a high income too easily obtained. The causal relation between parsimony, the rate of profit, and accumulation is explicated in this article; Adam Smith’s observations concerning “the merchants of Cadiz and Lisbon” examined critically; and some conjectures offered as to why Smith’s successors should have rejected parsimony as a useful concept.

Irving Fisher believed in evidence-based decision making. This paper considers how three aspects of Fisher’s methodology could be useful now in the quest to deal with U.S. financial instability: (1) his institutional approach; (2) his efforts to use index number theory as a means to improve official statistics data; and (3) his interest in automating aspects of data analyses. The paper concludes with a call to action for Fisher’s progeny. Actions to solve US financial instability are surely the most fitting possible tribute to Irving Fisher.

During the period 1871–1918, Sweden was under the in.uence, in many respects, of intellectual currents emanating from the German Empire. On the plane of economic policy many Swedish social scientists and public debaters were in.uenced by German Kathedersozialismus and state socialism. In Sweden, as in other countries, this heritage has long been tucked out of view in historical writings, perhaps because there was not much to boast about after the defeat of the “German model” in the First World War.1 Interest has begun to awaken in recent years, however. Leading economists such as Gustav von Schmoller and Adolph Wagner have attracted attention (see e.g., Backhaus 1997) and their in.uence in the United States has been examined (Carlson 1999, Rodgers 1998, and Senn 1997). In Sweden, too, interest in German Kathedersozialismus and state socialism is rising with respect to its in.uence on social scientists (Wisselgren 2000) and (social democratic) politicians (Karlsson 2001).