|
on History and Philosophy of Economics |
| By: | Juan CARVAJALINO; Herrade IGERSHEIM |
| Abstract: | This article revisits the debate between John Rawls and John Harsanyi by drawing on newly explored archival materials. Traditionally viewed as a short-lived, technical disagreement of the 1970s over the rational criterion for choice under uncertainty—the maximin versus average utility rules—their exchange in fact spanned nearly four decades, from their first encounter in 1964 to the late 1990s. The paper reconstructs this dialogue to reveal its ethical and philosophical depth, showing that what began as a technical dispute gradually evolved into a confrontation over the moral foundations of justice. The paper traces four stages of this evolving relationship, emphasizing Harsanyi’s later overlooked “philosophical turn” and his continuing attempts to defend utilitarianism against Rawls’s egalitarianism. By revealing all the facets of their exchange, the study enriches our understanding of the modern dialogue between economics and philosophy and of the enduring opposition between utilitarian and egalitarian conceptions of social justice. |
| Keywords: | John Rawls, John Harsanyi, Maximin, Utilitarianism, Social justice. |
| JEL: | B21 B31 D60 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2026-07 |
| By: | Jakub Ryłow (Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw) |
| Abstract: | This article examines the intellectual connections between the works of Kenneth Arrow, Alan Garber, and Peter Zweifel in the context of the economics of medicine, with particular emphasis on uncertainty, decision-making, and risk. It argues that health economics should be understood not merely as an applied field, but as a domain in which economic theory, mathematical economics, and actuarial science intersect. Arrow's analysis establishes uncertainty and information asymmetry as structural features of medical care markets, challenging standard welfare-theoretic assumptions. Garber extends this insight by formalizing medical decision-making through cost-effectiveness analysis and decision theory, translating clinical uncertainty into economically tractable choice problems. Zweifel's contributions to actuarial risk theory provide the mathematical foundations for health insurance systems, enabling the aggregation, pricing, and long-term management of medical risk. Taken together, these approaches demonstrate that modern health economics relies on mathematical formalization not only to model behavior, but to sustain the institutional viability of health care systems through insurance, risk pooling, and intertemporal solvency. The economics of medicine thus emerges as a field in which mathematical economics and actuarial methods are indispensable for understanding how societies manage health-related uncertainty. |
| Keywords: | health economics, cost-effectiveness analysis, QALY, willingness to pay, health insurance, decision theory, actuarial science, medical uncertainty, risk pooling |
| JEL: | D81 I11 I13 C61 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:war:wpaper:2026-6 |
| By: | Jakub Ryłow (University of Warsaw, Faculty of Economic Sciences) |
| Abstract: | The paper examines the logical theory of probability formulated by John Maynard Keynes in A Treatise on Probability (1921) as an axiomatic project competing with the measure-theoretic approach to probability codified by Andrei Kolmogorov in Grundbegriffe der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung (1933). We present the structure of both approaches, identify the key divergences — the epistemological interpretation of the probabilistic relation, Keynes’s rejection of full numerability, the status of conditional probability, and the concept of the weight of evidence — and analyse the reasons for Kolmogorov’s triumph. We survey four contemporary interpretive traditions: subjective Bayesianism, frequentism, logical probability, and imprecise probabilities. Particular attention is paid to current applications — from Bayesian inference in machine learning and decision theory under uncertainty, to catastrophe risk pricing and uncertainty management in climate models. We argue that Keynes’s intuitions, long neglected, are gaining new significance in the face of the epistemic challenges of the twenty-first century. |
| Keywords: | logical probability, measure theory, weight of evidence, imprecise probabilities, Bayesianism |
| JEL: | B41 C10 C11 D81 G32 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:war:wpaper:2026-8 |
| By: | Asuamah Yeboah, Samuel |
| Abstract: | Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) is widely recognised as a literary satire, yet its economic insights have received limited systematic analysis. The study presents a novel interdisciplinary examination, applying institutional and behavioural economic frameworks to Swift’s four voyages, Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, and the land of the Houyhnhnms, to illuminate enduring economic and governance principles. By interpreting Swift’s allegorical societies through the lenses of rent-seeking, moral governance, resource misallocation, and bounded rationality, the paper demonstrates that his satire anticipates core concepts of modern economics, including public choice theory, welfare economics, institutional economics, and behavioural economics. Uniquely, the analysis extends beyond literary critique to draw contemporary policy implications for developing economies, with a particular focus on Ghana. The study shows that political patronage, bureaucratic inefficiency, corruption, and behavioural biases observed in these contexts mirror those in Swift’s fictional societies, underscoring the relevance of ethical leadership, rational institutions, and behaviourally informed policy design. By bridging literature, economic theory, and practical governance, this research contributes to the emerging field of “literary economics” and provides a novel framework for understanding how cultural narratives can inform economic reasoning, institutional reform, and sustainable development. |
| Keywords: | Gulliver’s Travels, institutional economics, behavioural economics, governance, moral economy, literary economics, policy reform. |
| JEL: | D03 D72 O11 O17 P48 |
| Date: | 2026–01–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:128279 |
| By: | Simon Bittmann (SAGE - Sociétés, acteurs, gouvernement en Europe - ENGEES - École Nationale du Génie de l'Eau et de l'Environnement de Strasbourg - UNISTRA - Université de Strasbourg - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement); Ulysse Lojkine (AxPo - AxPo Observatory of Market Society Polarization - Sciences Po - Sciences Po) |
| Abstract: | This paper sets a new empirical agenda for exploitation theory, through the notion of chains. Exploitation generally offers three attractive properties compared to more commonly used concepts—inequality and domination—in that it is simultaneously distributive, relational, and openly counterfactual, yet it remains an underexplored notion. While both Marxist and neoclassical traditions focus on dyadic relations—either worker-employer or through market exchange—most exploitative situations bear several relational components, where agents can simultaneously stand as exploited and exploiters. Building on a sociological-relational tradition, we identify four chains—I (connected), L (hinged), V (dual) and C (complicit)—which we argue represent the elementary structures of exploitation. We then contend that this meso-level approach, complementary to individual-transactional and structural accounts, bears potential for sociological analysis and then explore how these chains materialize in various economic sites—within the production unit, on the market, in the domestic sphere, and by the state. |
| Keywords: | Domination, Labor, Inequality, Theory, Exploitation |
| Date: | 2025–12–30 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04435653 |
| By: | Uzi Segal (Boston College); Zhuzhu Zhou (Xiamen University) |
| Abstract: | In a social choice setting, individuals may be unwilling to aggregate their preferences with what they regard as wrong preferences held by others because they lead to outcomes that harm themselves, harm others, are socially inefficient, or are morally unacceptable. People may still be willing to compromise with those who believe that although such preferences are wrong, society should nonetheless accept them. We offer two methods of two-level aggre- gation for such situations. In the first method, each member of society first aggregates the “corrected” individual preferences, and society then aggregates these aggregated views. In the second method, for each person, society first aggregates everyone’s views about that person’s preferences, and then aggregates the resulting individual “corrected” preferences. If these two methods yield the same social ranking, then the aggregation rule must be the sum of functions of the corrected utilities. |
| Keywords: | Social welfare function; aggregation rule; spurious unanimity |
| JEL: | D70 D30 D60 |
| Date: | 2026–03–16 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:boc:bocoec:1108 |
| By: | Matthan, Tanya |
| Abstract: | Refusing simple narratives that equate the state of climate action to the quantity of finance flowing in its name, Climate Finance shows that financial instruments and ideas are built on moral and political assumptions about what is valued, whose risks need protection, and who is responsible for redressing harm. Departing from both mainstream and critical approaches to climate finance, the authors neither take financial logics and dynamics to be inevitable and essential, nor dismiss its possibilities for real climate action. Instead, they investigate finance as a dynamic space of political contestation, in which unevenly situated actors envision, negotiate, and build diverse climate futures. In doing so, the book not only offers us vital tools and frameworks to understand what climate finance is and does. Rather, by recognizing the need for a multiplicity of strategies to address our planetary predicament, Climate Finance also pushes for a more expansive imagination of the possible in relation to the actual. |
| Keywords: | climate finance; justice; political contestation |
| JEL: | F3 G3 |
| Date: | 2026–03–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:137325 |
| By: | Engelbert Stockhammer |
| Abstract: | The paper discusses the historical development of the debate on financialization supported by bibliometric analysis. There are several origins of the concept of financialisation in the 1990s and in the early 2000s this consolidates in a transdisciplinary project: an attempt to create a critical conversation across academic disciplines about the impact of finance on the economy and society. This was driven by the team of CRESC by organising workshops and special issues, involving critical business studies, constructivist approaches on the household and heterodox macroeconomics. This created the basis for the success of the concept and, since the global financial crisis, enabled an explosive rise of studies on financialisation. But with success also come a fragmentation of the debate and its disintegration along disciplinary lines. Thus, research on financialization today is published in more prestigious journals, but it has decoupled from the core financialisation debate of the 2000s. |
| Keywords: | financialization, sociology of science, bibliometric analysis, history of thought |
| JEL: | B29 B59 G30 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pke:wpaper:pkwp2608 |
| By: | Debin Ma (Fudan University); Jared Rubin (Chapman University); Weiwen Yin (University of Macau) |
| Abstract: | This paper revisits the old thesis of the contrasting paths of modernization between Japan and China. It develops a new analytical framework regarding the role of knowledge acquisition (propositional vs. prescriptive) and political centralization as the key drivers behind these contrasting paths. Our model and historical data highlight how the introduction of these elements contributed to Meiji Japan’s decisive turn towards the West and Qing China’s lethargic response to Western imperialism. Our analytical framework, developed from a comparative historical narrative and quantitative data, sheds new light on the importance of knowledge acquisition in enabling developing countries to reach the world’s economic frontier. |
| Keywords: | propositional knowledge, prescriptive knowledge, China, Japan, economic development, economic divergence, Meiji Reform, centralization, decentralization |
| JEL: | P52 N45 N40 Z10 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:chu:wpaper:26-04 |
| By: | Laura Padilla-Angulo; Diego Jorrat; Jos\'e-Ignacio Ant\'on; Javier Sierra |
| Abstract: | This paper evaluates the effect of a short, interactive popularisation talk on upper-secondary students' interest in Economics. This contrasts with previous research, which has primarily examined impersonal interventions to boost interest in Economics. The intervention presents Economics as an empirical social science engaged with real-world social problems. Using a cluster-randomised field experiment conducted during secondary-school campus visits in Spain, we find no statistically significant average effect on stated interest in studying Economics. However, the intervention generates substantial heterogeneity: those with stronger altruistic preferences become significantly more likely to express interest after the talk. These findings suggest that informational outreach may shape who perceives the discipline as aligned with their motivations, even if it does not substantially increase overall interest. More broadly, they indicate that presenting Economics as empirical and socially relevant may broaden the profile of those who consider the field. |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2603.19390 |
| By: | Tomasz Strzalecki |
| Abstract: | A utility function has been proposed that values more those lives that are saved by not imposing a harmful treatment and values less those lives that could be saved by treating people who would otherwise die. I do not dispute the ethical motivation behind this kind of asymmetry. However, as my example illustrates, the scope of applicability of such a decision criterion may be limited. |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2603.06820 |
| By: | Edward Nelson |
| Abstract: | Central bank independence is a major area of study, but the economic literature has been characterized by numerous misstatements regarding how U.S. monetary policy independence has operated over time. Against this backdrop, this paper lays out major elements of the practice of central bank independence in the United States in the period from 1951 to 2006—a time span that encompasses the William McChesney Martin, Jr., through Alan Greenspan tenures as the head of the Federal Reserve. Many documentary materials and policymaker quotations not considered in previous research on U.S. monetary policy are highlighted. The analysis covers both institutional aspects (statutory objectives, formalities of Federal Reserve structure, and conventions followed in regularizing the central bank’s interactions with the legislative and executive branches) and the conceptual basis for independence, as expressed by leading Federal Reserve officials, particularly Chairs. It is shown—with heavy reliance on their own words—how Federal Reserve Chairs have characterized the position of the central bank within the governmental structure of the United States and how they have set out the case for monetary policy independence. What emerges is that successive Chairs over the decades made essentially the same, three-part, economic case for independence. This case does not rely on the arguments associated with economic research on time inconsistency. |
| Keywords: | Federal Reserve System; Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.); monetary policy rules; central banks |
| JEL: | E52 E58 |
| Date: | 2026–03–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedgfe:102903 |