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on History and Philosophy of Economics |
| By: | Nenovsky, Nikolay; Marinova, Tsvetelina |
| Abstract: | Between 1958 and 1971 (until the adoption of the Comecon's Comprehensive Programme), active work was carried out on models for complete separation from world (capitalist) market prices. Bulgarian economists were particularly active in this regard, and their position was also expressed politically, which gives us reason to examine their proposals in particular. To this end, the present text sequentially examines several debated methodological issues related to pricing (within the framework of the Marxian labour theory of value, particularly in the work of Jacques Aroyo), selected ideas of Bulgarian economists on practical pricing (again Jacques Aroyo and Evgeni Mateev), the Tsvetkov–Golubarev approach, as well as Stefan Stoilov’s analyses of the potential effects of a transition to an independent pricing basis. |
| Keywords: | Socialist integration, international prices, prices formation, Comecon, Bulgarian economists |
| JEL: | B22 B24 F50 N14 P33 |
| Date: | 2026–01–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:127666 |
| By: | Gavin Cook |
| Abstract: | There is a science of science and an informal economics of economics, but there is not a cohesive sociology of sociology. We turn the central findings and theoretical lenses of the sociological tradition and the sociological study of stratification inward on sociology itself to investigate how sociology has changed since the 1970s. We link two bibliometric databases to trace diachronic relationships between PhD training and publication outcomes, both of which are understudied in the science of science and sociology of science. All of sociology's top 3 journals remained biased against alum of less prestigious PhD programs, and while most forms of bias in elite sociological publishing have ameliorated over time, the house bias of the American Journal of Sociology in favor PhD alumnae of UChicago has intensified. |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2601.04579 |
| By: | Sebastian Galiani; Ramiro H. Gálvez; Franco Mettola La Giglia; Raul A. Sosa |
| Abstract: | We measure how frontier research frames what is normatively at stake along the efficiency and equity dimension. We develop and validate an LLM-based measurement pipeline and apply it to 27, 464 full-text journal articles from 1950 to 2021. Efficiency focused framing rises through the late 1980s, then declines as equity related framing expands after 1990, especially in applied work and policy evaluations. By 2021, papers with an equity component are about as common as papers framed purely around efficiency. President transmittal letters in the Economic Report of the President show a similar post 1990 shift toward equity, providing an external benchmark. |
| JEL: | A14 B2 C8 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34714 |
| By: | Ori Livson; Siddharth Pritam; Mikhail Prokopenko |
| Abstract: | Preference cycles are prevalent in problems of decision-making, and are contradictory when preferences are assumed to be transitive. This contradiction underlies Condorcet's Paradox, a pioneering result of Social Choice Theory, wherein intuitive and seemingly desirable constraints on decision-making necessarily lead to contradictory preference cycles. Topological methods have since broadened Social Choice Theory and elucidated existing results. However, characterisations of preference cycles in Topological Social Choice Theory are lacking. In this paper, we address this gap by introducing a framework for topologically modelling preference cycles that generalises Baryshnikov's existing topological model of strict, ordinal preferences on 3 alternatives. In our framework, the contradiction underlying Condorcet's Paradox topologically corresponds to the non-orientability of a surface homeomorphic to either the Klein Bottle or Real Projective Plane, depending on how preference cycles are represented. These findings allow us to reduce Arrow's Impossibility Theorem to a statement about the orientability of a surface. Furthermore, these results contribute to existing wide-ranging interest in the relationship between non-orientability, impossibility phenomena in Economics, and logical paradoxes more broadly. |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2601.07283 |
| By: | Karl Svozil |
| Abstract: | In a brief reflection on the principles of human society, P. A. M. Dirac articulated a structural tension between two widely affirmed norms: that it is good and natural for parents to improve the prospects of their own children, and that justice requires that all children have equal opportunities in life. These principles, each compelling on its own, cannot be fully realized together. This paper reconstructs Dirac's dilemma, connects it to the dynamics of compounding advantage and inheritance, and situates it within the broader history of political philosophy, including the work of Rawls, Dworkin, Cohen, Brighouse and Swift, Nozick, Murphy and Nagel, and others. The paper argues that attempts to eliminate the resulting injustices entirely risk damaging the non--zero--sum structures that generate general prosperity, and defends a position of "managed inequality": a robust social floor and real mobility, combined with limits on extreme dynastic accumulation and an explicit acceptance of some residual, but constrained, inherited advantage. |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2601.14322 |