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on History and Philosophy of Economics |
| By: | Stefano Di Bucchianico; Alessandro Le Donne |
| Abstract: | This paper offers new textual evidence supporting the Sraffian 'corn-ratio' interpretation of David Ricardo's early theory of profits. We analyze the first edition (1825) of John Ramsay McCulloch's Principles of Political Economy, arguing that it provides a clear articulation of the profit rate’s physical determination. McCulloch, Ricardo’s pupil, defines profit as the excess of commodities produced over those expended in production and calculates the profit rate directly in physical quantities of corn. This finding parallels the evidence found in Torrens, ultimately reinforcing the argument that the ‘corn model’ was deeply rooted in the early classical tradition. At last, our comparative analysis contrasts this initial, clear physical framework with McCulloch’s later shift towards value-centric reasoning. |
| Keywords: | John R. McCulloch, corn model, Sraffian interpretation, David Ricardo, rate of profit Jel Classification: A31, B12, B30 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:usi:wpaper:933 |
| By: | Morgan, Mary S. |
| Abstract: | When newly independent states in Africa set out to make their own economies in the 1960s, they did so under the label of “planning, ” a generic term denoting economic policy-making to create the economic future. This planning was guided by international experts, sent “on missions” to help, or perhaps oversee, local economists in what was seen then as an expert, technocratic process. Nigeria offers an important example of this technocracy at work, under the guidance of its “missionary”: Wolfgang Stolper. His diary, and his writings of the day, reveal how local information and local values travelled around social, political and economic circles, to be then spliced together according to certain economic principles in making a “five-year plan” for the future of Nigeria. |
| Keywords: | economic planning; development "missions"; new states; mutable mobiles; national accoutnts |
| JEL: | N0 R14 J01 J1 |
| Date: | 2025–11–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:129879 |
| By: | Heng-fu Zou (Institute for Advanced Study, Wuhan University; World Bank) |
| Abstract: | Frank H. Knight's Risk, Uncertainty and Profit(1921) gave economics the canonical distinction between risk and uncertainty and explained profit as the residual return to the bearer of genuine (non-probabilistic) uncertainty. Ludwig von Mises's Human Action (1949) subsumes Knight's insight within a far more comprehensive architecture. Mises embeds en trepreneurship in a praxeological theory of action; shows that monetary calculation and market prices are the preconditions for entrepreneurial judgment; analytically separates entrepreneurial profit from interest, wages, and monopoly gains; locates entrepreneurial roles throughout firms and markets (not only in owner-insurers); frames competition as a dynamic selection process guided by profit and loss; links monetary-financial regimes to systematic entrepreneurial error (business cycles); and derives the institutional constitution-private property, open entry, freedom of contract - of what we call a republic of entrepreneurs. This paper reconstructs Mises's entrepreneur in depth, contrasts it with Knight's narrower uncertainty- bearing vantage, and develops measurable implications for growth, policy, and political economy. |
| Date: | 2025–10–31 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cuf:wpaper:800 |
| By: | Heng-fu Zou (Institute for Advanced Study, Wuhan University; World Bank) |
| Abstract: | This paper advances the idea of a republic of entrepreneurs - a spontaneous, rule-governed order in which many people repeatedly propose, test, and diffuse improvements-and argues that it is the main engine of modern prosperity. We braid this republic with the republic of letters and the republic of science, contending that open discourse, self-governed inquiry, and contestable enterprise reinforce one another to convert useful knowledge into useful industry. The analytical backbone in- tegrates Cantillon's functional entrepreneur, Mises's economic calculation and residual claimancy, Hayek's discovery procedure and dispersed knowl edge, Kirzner's alertness and equilibration, Mokyr's Industrial Enlightenment and "market for ideas, " McCloskey's rhetoric of bourgeois dignity, and Phelps's grassroots dynamism. Historical cases-Britain, the United States, France, Germany, and biomedicine show that breakthrough eras depended less on elite R&D and more on dense portfolios of small, decentralized experiments under general rules that kept feedback honest and im itation lawful. We contrast this republican view with outcome-targeting elite-centric growth models, derive testable implications (proposal den- sity, feedback speed, diffusion breadth), and sketch a policy stance that privileges general over discretionary rules, interoperability and open stan dards, reputation systems that make quality legible, and intellectual property that teaches while remaining finite. Reframing innovation as a civic practice explains both the magnitude and inclusiveness of the Great Enrichment and recommends "republic of entrepreneurs" as a term of art for growth and development economics. |
| Date: | 2025–11–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cuf:wpaper:798 |
| By: | Gunther Maier; Sabine Sedlacek |
| Abstract: | Since John P.A. Ioannidis published his article “Why Most Published Research Findings are False” (Ioannidis, 2005), substantial evidence has accumulated that science and research in their current form have a problem with replicability and reproducibility of their published findings. The discussion initially focused on psychology and medicine, but in the meantime, we know that other natural and social science disciplines are affected as well (Baker, 2016). This issue goes to the heart of science and research, as it undermines the credibility of theoretical concepts that build on those findings and may call into question substantial parts of accumulated scientific knowledge. Most alarmingly, these are not random anomalies but are related to basic elements of our traditional research paradigm. The discussion of a “reproducibility crisis” in science and research feeds directly into Open Science initiatives and ideas that have emerged as a new paradigm in publicly funded research in recent years. Open knowledge transfer is discussed in the context of the European Research Area (ERA), and national knowledge transfer strategies include open science commitment between public and private sectors. At the international level UNESCO provides an international framework for open science policy and practice aiming at technological and knowledge-based harmonization between and within countries. The framework includes a set of agreed standard setting steps, such as promoting a shared understanding of open science, investment in infrastructure and resources. Thus, there is international commitment on promoting and implementing open science into research and there is more awareness in publicly funded research. To our knowledge, these issues have thus far been largely ignored in Real Estate. We basically do not know whether there is a “reproducibility crisis” in Real estate as well and if so, how large it is. With our paper we want to take a first step toward answering this question. The paper will examine the publishing behavior of researchers in real estate journals and aim at identifying whether and how researchers provide access to their research designs, data and results. This can be seen as a prerequisite for reproducible research. Only when authors fully disclose these elements, one can even try to replicate their research. In this article, we will concentrate on access to the data. We select articles published in major main real estate outlets within the period 2022-24. For obvious reasons, we concentrate on empirical papers and exclude purely theoretical and conceptual contributions. By use of data-mining methods, we identify all text areas that contain the string “data”. Then, we read through these text areas and categorize the article by clarity of the provided information about data sources, availability of those data and the level of difficulty by which other researchers can access those data. In the end, we hope to be able to reach a lower bound for the percentage of non-reproducible publications in Real estate. |
| Keywords: | journal publications; Reproducibility |
| JEL: | R3 |
| Date: | 2025–01–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arz:wpaper:eres2025_229 |