scholarly journals Sonya Marie Scott's Architectures of economic subjectivity: the philosophical foundations of the subject in the history of economic thought. London and New York: Routledge, 2013, 302 pp.

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 150
Author(s):  
Ivan Boldyrev
2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Cristina Marcuzzo

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the nature of research methods in the history of economic thought. In reviewing the "techniques" which are involved in the discipline, four broader categories are identified: a) textual exegesis; b) "rational reconstructions"; c) "contextual analysis"; and d) "historical narrative". After examining these different styles of doing history of economic thought, the paper addresses the question of its appraisal, namely what is good history of economic thought. Moreover, it is argued that there is a distinction to be made between doing economics and doing history of economic thought. The latter requires the greatest possible respect for contexts and texts, both published and unpublished; the former entails constructing a theoretical framework that is in some respects freer, not bound by derivation, from the authors. Finally, the paper draws upon Econlit records to assess what has been done in the subject in the last two decades in order to frame some considerations on how the past may impinge on the future.


2016 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Turk

In the history of economic thought Otto Neurath, who is known foremost for spearheading the development of the Vienna Circle of philosophers, has served largely as a foil for his advocacy of in-kind calculation and economic planning. Yet Neurath, who was trained as an economist and wrote extensively about economics, including its philosophical foundations, held an abiding interest in the use of language in science, and was strongly influenced by turn-of-the-twentieth-century conventionalists, among them Henri Poincaré and Pierre Duhem. Consequently, Neurath’s critique of what he saw as the conceptual flaws of economics and its too narrow framework as price theory was rooted as much in its imprecise and ‘unsorted’ use of language as in his critical view of capitalism. As such, he anticipated the ‘linguistic turn’ in economics that gained prominence only a half-century later, without any recognition of his presaging role.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth John Button

This paper is concerned with examining the role of the English economist Arthur (A.J.) Brown in the 1950s debate surrounding the wage-change unemployment relationship. While the publication of William (Bill) Phillips’ 1958 paper, and the subsequent moniker of the “Phillips Curve” attracted a wealth of attention, Brown’s book on the subject, The Great Inflation, and his later work on inflation, has received much less. Here the focus is on redressing somewhat this situation by looking at Brown’s work to see how much it predates Phillips’ paper, and what differences there are to it. We also considers this within the changing institutional structure of English economic networks in the 1950s that led to a relatively rapid acceptance of Phillips’ analysis, and in many cases, to a strong, ordinal interpretation of the Phillips Curve that overshadowed Brown’s work.


Author(s):  
Lucas Casonato

Abstract This paper analyzes the presence of Israel Kirzner in the History of Economic Thought and focusing on his professional engagement with other economists. His academic trajectory is contextualized on three milestones of the recent history of the Austrian School. The first one is the ending of the socialist economic calculation debate, when the Austrian was considered unconvincing due to the economics’ shift to a general equilibrium model of the economy; in the aftermath of the debate, Kirzner entered at the New York University’s PhD program and was mentored by Ludwig von Mises. At this point, Kirzner started to develop his ideas on entrepreneurship and to aim an audience wider than his Austrian peers. The second is the Austrian Revival in the 1970s, in which the prestigious recovery stage of the Austrian School, thanks to Kirzner assuming a leadership role in the process. The third is in the 1980s, when a more consolidated Austrian School attempts to define itself, as Kirzner retains an Austrian vision founded on the synthesis between Mises and Hayek. It is concluded that Kirzner’s professional engagement was fundamental in the recovery of Austrian theory. He communicated Austrian ideas to a wider audience and synthetized Misesian and Hayekian proposals on the market process. These efforts allow us to recognize a Kirznerian view of the Austrian School, established with the traditional microeconomic theory, but including greater subjectivity on the interpretation of economic phenomena, becoming a more general, more realistic theory.


1992 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger E. Backhouse

This paper reviews the way in which constructivist or anti-representationalist arguments have been used as an argument in favor of changing the way we write the history of economic thought. It is argued that though such arguments provide some important new perspectives on the subject, their use as a comprehensive methodological critique of “traditional” approaches to the subject rests on the theses that a non-foundationalist methodology is impossible, and that we can assume that contemporary economics is in a healthy state. If these theses are not accepted, the case against “traditional” histories collapses.


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