Defense of an Open Economy Model for Post–Civil War Spain

2020 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 741-772
Author(s):  
Alfonso Expósito ◽  
Rocío Sánchez-Lissen

This paper analyzes the work done by the economist Manuel de Torres Martínez (1903–1960), chair of economic theory at the University of Madrid, in the defense of an open economy model for Spain, through his prologues to the translations of foreign economics texts, during his period as director in Madrid of the economics section of the Publishing Aguilar (1945–60). With his work, Torres provided a guide to those responsible for economic policy to introduce the urgent changes needed by the Spanish economy, due to its problems of external deficit, inflation, and general shortages of products. At the same time, they contributed significantly to the diffusion and updating in Spain of the economic thought of foreign authors. Many of the ideas proposed by Torres and included in these prologues became a reality with the Stabilization Plan in 1959, which meant the definitive abandonment of an economic policy characterized by autarky and intense interventionism.

1980 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 773-791 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. C. Coleman

The intention of this paper is to look at some of the problems which arise in attempts to provide ‘explanations’ of mercantilism and especially its English manifestations. By ‘explanations’ I mean the efforts which some writers have made causally to relate the historical appearance of sets of economic notions or general recommendations on economic policy or even acts of economic policy by the state to particular long-term phenomena of, or trends in, economic history. Historians of economic thought have not generally made such attempts. With a few exceptions they have normally concerned themselves with tracing and analysing the contributions to economic theory made by those labelled as mercantilists. The most extreme case of non-explanation is provided by Eli Heckscher's reiterated contention in his two massive volumes that mercantilism was not to be explained by reference to the economic circumstances of the time; mercantilist policy was not to be seen as ‘the outcome of the economic situation’; mercantilist writers did not construct their system ‘out of any knowledge of reality however derived’. So strongly held an antideterminist fortress, however congenial a haven for some historians of ideas, has given no comfort to other historians – economic or political, Marxist or non-Marxist – who obstinately exhibit empiricist tendencies. Some forays against the fortress have been made. Barry Supple's analysis of English commerce in the early seventeenth century and the resulting presentation of mercantilist thought and policy as ‘the economics of depression’ has passed into the textbooks and achieved the status of an orthodoxy.


Studia Humana ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 28-36
Author(s):  
Pedro J. Caranti

AbstractMartín de Azpilcueta and his fellow Spanish Scholastics writing and teaching at the University of Salamanca during Spain’s Golden Age are rightly pointed to by historians of economic thought as being major contributors toward, if not outright founders of modern economic theory. Among these is the theory of time-preference for which Azpilcueta has repeatedly been given the credit for discovering. However, this discovery is a curious one given how the same man, Azpilcueta, condemned usury in general during his whole life. If Azpilcueta did in fact discover this theory and fully understand its implications, we would reasonably expect him to have questioned his support for the ban on charging an interest on a loan. This paper, therefore, challenges the claim that Azpilcueta understood and revived time-preference theory and shows how his understanding was much more nuanced, and, at times, inconsistent.


2008 ◽  
pp. 128-140
Author(s):  
T. Kouznetsova

The article presents the analysis of works by three prominent representatives of Russian social thought, who had to leave the country in the beginning of the Soviet era and kept working abroad - A. D. Bilimovich, S. S. Maslov and N. S. Timasheff. The author shows that despite the lack of information they managed to work fruitfully in such fields as economic theory, applied economic analysis (especially in agricultural issues) and sociology. The ideas of these scientists concerning ways of Russia’s historical development, Soviet economic policy etc. are of vital importance till nowadays.


2019 ◽  
Vol 139 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-134
Author(s):  
Michael Stettler

Karl Mittermaier lectured in the Department of Economics at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, specialising in the history and the philosophy of economics, with some of his work being published posthumously, such as “The Invisible Hand and some Thoughts on the Non-Existent in What We Study” published in this journal. He analysed economic thought and methodology from the perspective of the nominalism and realism divide, identifying the nominalist attitude in economic theory as having a pernicious effect on the clarity of our understanding of economics and economic questions.


2018 ◽  
pp. 95-110
Author(s):  
L. D. Shirokorad

This article shows how representatives of various theoretical currents in economics at different times in history interpreted the efforts of Nikolay Sieber in defending and developing Marxian economic theory and assessed his legacy and role in forming the Marxist school in Russian political economy. The article defines three stages in this process: publication of Sieber’s work dedicated to the analysis of the first volume of Marx’s Das Kapital and criticism of it by Russian opponents of Marxian economic theory; assessment of Sieber’s work by the narodniks, “Legal Marxists”, Georgiy Plekhanov, and Vladimir Lenin; the decline in interest in Sieber in light of the growing tendency towards an “organic synthesis” of the theory of marginal utility and the Marxist social viewpoint.


2019 ◽  
pp. 135-145
Author(s):  
Viktor A. Popov

Deep comprehension of the advanced economic theory, the talent of lecturer enforced by the outstanding working ability forwarded Vladimir Geleznoff scarcely at the end of his thirties to prepare the publication of “The essays of the political economy” (1898). The subsequent publishing success (8 editions in Russia, the 1918­-year edition in Germany) sufficiently demonstrates that Geleznoff well succeded in meeting the intellectual inquiry of the cross­road epoch of the Russian history and by that taking the worthful place in the history of economic thought in Russia. Being an acknowledged historian of science V. Geleznoff was the first and up to now one of the few to demonstrate the worldwide community of economists the theoretically saturated view of Russian economic thought in its most fruitful period (end of XIX — first quarter of XX century).


2009 ◽  
pp. 4-27
Author(s):  
A. Cohen ◽  
G. Harcourt

The article written by the well-known theorists and historians of economic thought contains a detailed overview of the Cambridge capital controversy, which had raged from the mid-1950-s through the mid-1970-s. The authors track the origins of the controversy and cover arguments of both sides in chronological order. From their point of view, the discussion hasnt been resolved, and its main underlying aspects were ideological beliefs and fundamental methodological controversies on the nature of equilibrium and on the role of time in economic theory. The article is published with comments written by other leading theoreticians.


2008 ◽  
pp. 47-55
Author(s):  
A. Nekipelov ◽  
Yu. Goland

The appeals to minimize state intervention in the Russian economy are counterproductive. However the excessive involvement of the state is fraught with the threat of building nomenclature capitalism. That is the main idea of the series of articles by prominent representatives of Russian economic thought who formulate their position on key elements of the long-term strategy of Russia’s development. The articles deal with such important issues as Russia’s economic policy, transition to knowledge-based economy, basic directions of monetary and structural policies, strengthening of property rights, development of human potential, foreign economic priorities of our state.


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