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on History and Philosophy of Economics |
| By: | Sidharth Gat |
| Abstract: | Many economic theories have been introduced over the course of history to articulate our understanding of the economy. Classical theories by Adam Smith and David Ricardo's Comparative Advantage have been foundational for the last century's work. Improvements have been achieved over time, incorporating insights from many disparate fields of study: contemporary frameworks like Behavioural Economics and Information Economics, which incorporate psychological insights and deviation from rational decision-making and insights from network theory and how the information flow affects the market behaviour, respectively. In this paper, I motivate the necessity of incorporating insights from Physics, and also show that trade as a phenomenon described by the comparative advantage theory cannot exist without the law of conservation of Energy, and incorporating this law leads to axiomatic completeness of the theory. Further, I also argue that while the economy is not a zero-sum game in terms of wealth, it does require at least one associated zero-sum parameter for trade and economy as phenomena to exist. |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2511.14034 |
| By: | Ryo Hongo (School of Economics, Kwansei Gakuin University) |
| Abstract: | This is the Japanese translation of E.H. Chamberlin's article 'An Experimental Imperfect Market' (1948). The article analyzed the results of those experiments which he had conducted in his course at Harvard University and showed that the prices and trading volumes in the experiments deviated from the equilibrium predicted by the standard supply and demand theory. For this contribution, he is often cited as one of the most important precursors in experimental economics (Smith 1962). |
| Keywords: | experimental economics, imperfect competition, Monopolistic Competition, Vernon Smith. |
| JEL: | B13 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kgu:wpaper:301 |
| By: | Pies, Ingo |
| Abstract: | Dieser Aufsatz rekonstruiert aus ordonomischer Perspektive die Ratlosigkeit, mit der George Stigler 1979 der säkularen Ausdehnung staatlicher Aktivitäten im 20. Jahrhundert gegenüberstand. Stigler interpretierte das Staatswachstum handlungstheoretisch (als Akteursproblem) als Ergebnis von Rent-Seeking und führte es damit kausal auf die Präferenzen von Bürgern und Interessengruppen zurück. Normativ geriet er so in eine Sackgasse, da innerhalb demokratischer Verfahren kaum noch Reformoptionen denkbar schienen, nachdem Präferenzen als Ursache der staatlichen Entwicklung ausgemacht waren. Diese Blockade ist methodischer Natur. Sie lässt sich auflösen, indem man die Staatsausdehnung situationstheoretisch (als Ordnungsproblem) erklärt - als Folge institutioneller Fehlanreize und öffentlicher Denkfehler. Zwei umfangreiche Anhänge erläutern den methodischen Zugang des ordonomischen Forschungsprogramms zu einer kritischen Auseinandersetzung mit sozialistischen Ideen. |
| Abstract: | This article, from an ordonomic perspective, reconstructs the sense of helplessness George Stigler articulated in 1979 as he grappled with the secular expansion of state activity throughout the twentieth century. Stigler interpreted this growth in action-theoretical terms, attributing it to rent-seeking behavior, thus ultimately tracing its causes to the preferences of citizens and interest groups. Normatively, however, this led him into a conceptual impasse: within democratic procedures, reform appeared nearly impossible once preferences were assumed to be the driving force behind state development. This deadlock is methodological in nature. It can be overcome by reframing the expansion of the state in situation-theoretical terms-as a consequence of institutional incentive failures and widespread cognitive biases. Two comprehensive appendices elaborate on the ordonomic research program's methodological approach to critically engaging with socialist ideas. |
| Keywords: | Staatsausdehnung, Markt, Rent-Seeking, Sozialismus, Liberalismus, Moralparadoxon der Moderne, state expansion, market, rent-seeking, socialism, liberalism, moral paradox of modernity |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:mlucee:333388 |
| By: | Loureiro, Paulo Roberto Amorim |
| Abstract: | This paper develops a general equilibrium model in which ethics and greed coexist as opposing forces shaping social and economic stability. Individuals choose be- tween legal and illicit effort, while ethical agents internalize a moral cost, and the government sets enforcement and penalties. The dynamic interaction between moral restraint, institutional enforcement, and social respect determines the aggregate equilibrium. The model shows that, in the absence of virtue or enforcement, greed dominates and equilibrium collapses; yet, when moral costs or public integrity poli- cies rise, the economy converges to a stable and more equitable state. Mathematical stability is derived from Jury’s conditions, and an empirical strategy is proposed to test these mechanisms using crime, enforcement, and social capital data. Ultimately, morality emerges as an endogenous economic variable—an efficient complement to law, rather than its substitute. |
| Keywords: | Ethics, Greed, General Equilibrium, Crime, Enforcement, Welfare Policy, Spider-Man, Moral Economics |
| JEL: | D13 D5 I38 J12 K42 |
| Date: | 2025–05–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:126613 |
| By: | Juan Carlos De Pablo |
| Abstract: | El objetivo principal de esta monografía es reflexionar sobre la obra de un par de colegas nacidos hace cien años. Por un lado, Robert Merton Solow, que nació el 23 de agosto de 1924 y falleció el 21 de diciembre de 2023, después de que yo empezara a escribir esta nota. Por el otro, Arnold Carl Harberger, que vino al mundo el 27 de julio de dicho año y sigue presente entre nosotros. El trabajo incluye al final las biografías de ambos economistas. |
| Date: | 2024–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cem:doctra:865 |
| By: | Juan Carlos De Pablo |
| Abstract: | Las contribuciones de Hicks van más allá de la “IS-LM” y “Valor y capital”. Quien en 1972 recibió el premio Nobel economía fue mucho más que eso. Sin encarar una evaluación integral de su obra, el objetivo de estas líneas es mucho más modesto: descubrir “otro” Hicks, el agudo observador, tanto de la realidad como de la teoría. |
| Date: | 2024–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cem:doctra:875 |
| By: | Y. Y. Ding; S. Mckinstry; P. Su (Audencia Business School) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the accounting system of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service, a Chinese government department led from 1861 to 1907 by Robert Hart, an Irishman, who reported directly to the Chinese Government in his capacity as Inspector General. Utilising reports produced by the system and instructions given to staff for its operation, the paper outlines the system's main features. It shows how Hart transformed it from being an inward-looking accounting system involved in the collection of duties and the payment of operational expenses reporting to the Government only, to one that created a mass of publicly available data on Chinese international trade that was provided across the world as well as to the Chinese Qing Government. The paper evaluates the system and sets it in the context of recent accounting history by commenting on its Western and Chinese features. |
| Keywords: | customs, reporting, accountability, Chinese accounting, Western accounting |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05369325 |
| By: | Naudé, Wim (RWTH Aachen University) |
| Abstract: | The field of economics ought to be based on the fact that planet Earth is a rare Earth that is fundamentally an Ocean and Plant World. The rapid and continuing bulldozing of biodiversity across ocean and land that has been a feature of human society’s economic development over the past two centuries or so, demonstrates that the current political and economic response, framed by the narrow human-centric concept of sustainable development, has failed. Therefore, this paper calls for a fundamental planetary turn in perspective, moving beyond sustainability towards the biocentric concept of Planetary Habitability. The point is that fixing a slow leak in a spaceship (sustainability) is insufficient when the ship’s entire life support system is collapsing due to a fundamental design flaw (anthropocentrism); instead, the focus must shift to ensuring the entire ship can support life (habitability), regardless of immediate human convenience. |
| Keywords: | ecological economics, sustainability, biodiversity, environment |
| JEL: | Q57 Q54 B52 O44 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18281 |
| By: | Alexeev, Michael V.; Pyle, William; Wang, Jiaan |
| Abstract: | Although it has been speculated that the pain and dislocation of the early 1990s left Russians with an abiding distaste for the values that animated the transition from communism, the quantitative evidence for a lasting effect is thin. Drawing on a large, regionally representative survey from 2010, we show that in regions where the embrace of liberal values declined most in the early 1990s, support for democratic values remained weakest a generation later. Instrumenting for the change in values in the early 1990s with variables that capture Soviet-era economic distortions, we connect the vulnerability of a region to the market liberalization shock of 1992 to its diminished support for liberal political values in both shorter and longer runs, particularly for the older cohorts who would have experienced the early 1990s as adults. The endurance of the effect of the early 1990s economic shock stands in contrast to research from other contexts that the attitudinal effects of economic shocks experienced after early adulthood are short-lived. We speculate that a possible explanation for why the effect of the early 1990s endures in Russia was the amplification of the economic shock by an "identity shock" related to Russia's post-imperial loss of status. In support of this hypothesis, we use multiple waves of the Integrated Values Survey (IVS) to show that in Russia, the demand for democratic values declined in the first half of the 1990s relative to other former communist countries, opening a values gap that persisted through at least 2017. Lastly, we draw on a recent survey experiment to show that respondents primed to consider the economic collapse of the early 1990s, and to a lesser extent the dissolution of the Soviet Union, are less likely to embrace democratic values than those in a control group. |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:bofitp:333423 |