In 1951, Nobel Laureate Wassily Leontief put his finger on what was wrong with economics. It had remained a “deductive system resting upon a static set of premises,” when what was needed was an economics that would “combine economic facts and theory.” The new economics would be called “interindustry” or “input-output” analysis (Leontief 1966, p. 14). According to Leontief it is easy to “compute the complete table of input requirements at any given level of output, provided we know its input ratios.” These input ratios could be calculated from “engineering data on process design and operating procedure” (ibid., pp. 24–26). For Leontief and, I suspect, a large number of economists in 1951, the technological facts dependent only on the chemical and physical laws of nature—what I shall call “Leontief coefficients”—were indisputable. It would take so many units of coke to produce a ton of pig iron whether or not there was a human being alive on earth to witness that transformation. The Leontief coefficients were the bedrock of subsequent economic analysis. They were analogous to what the philosopher John R. Searle has termed “brute facts” (Searle 1995, p. 27).

In its brief history, the relation between game theory and economics has been characterized by phases of feverish elaboration of new contributions followed by periods in which an open skepticism concerning its usefulness prevailed. Moreover, this vaguely cyclical pattern of evolution has affected various research areas. After an initial period in which game theorists focused their attention on competitive market models, in the 1970s and 1980s they turned to the problems of oligopolistic markets and bargaining. Today the latter research areas are going through a phase of sedimentation and selection while other fields of study receive a strong impulse from the application of game theory.

One of the most significant statements in Joseph Schumpeter's discussion of Adam Smith in the History of Economic Analysis highlights the impact of scholastic thought upon Smith's economic analysis. Speaking of The Wealth of Nations, Schumpeter claimed that “the skeleton of Smith's analysis hails from the scholastics and natural-law philosophers” (Schumpeter 1954, p. 182). Though not the first to make this connection, Schumpeter's affirmation, alongside his treatment (ibid., part II, ch. 2) of the literature produced by these two groups, has been a stimulus to further exploration with respect to both the Protestant scholastics Hugo Grotius and Samuel Pufendorf and the medieval theologians (De Roover 1957; Bowley 1973). More recent studies which have followed in this vein have focused on the significance of the scholastic and natural law traditions for Smith's treatment of economic justice (Hont and Ignatieff 1983; Young and Gordon 1992).

Historians of economic thought have long debated about the methodological position adopted by Alfred Marshall (1842–1924) concerning the mathematization of economics. While Francis Y. Edgeworth and Marshall's pupils, most notably A. C. Pigou and J. M. Keynes, agreed that it was mainly through him that mathematical economics has since become respectable (see Pigou 1925, p. 66) and proclaimed him the founder of modern diagrammatic economics (ibid., p. 24), more recent commentators have criticized his failure to give proper credit to mathematics, and have even depicted him as an enemy of such an approach (see, for example, Schumpeter 1951, p. 97; Coase 1975; Brems 1975; Creedy 1986, p. 126; Schabas 1989; Huriot 1994, p. 17).

John Neville Keynes (1852–1949) is best known for fathering one of the most influential economists of our time, John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946). Yet in his own day he was a formidable logician1 and economist himself. Although overshadowed by his colleague Alfred Marshall, his Scope and Method of Political Economy (1891) is still considered a minor classic and read by specialists in the history of economic thought. Maynard Keynes's biographers have portrayed Neville as having a powerful influence on him, even if they have failed to detail the impact of the father's logic and economics on his famous son.

I can conceive of few academics presumptuous or foolhardy enough to write an “intellectual autobiography” unless invited to do so. It is no easy assignment. One seeks to protect a core of privacy; there is a residual subjectivity regarding events and persons that cannot be eliminated; one is obliged to tone things down for practical reasons. Even if one can hope to tell the “truth” it will not be the whole truth—certainly not in twenty-two pages. It must also be said that any linkages that might be suggested between character or experience and professional contribution (and an intellectual autobiography of course seeks out such linkages) can never progress beyond the stages of hypothesis; neither necessary nor sufficient causation is at issue. Yet I myself have learned something from this exercise; perhaps my readers will too.

In a recent paper (1994) in this journal, Elias L. Khalil makes two claims. First, he contends, the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is not unique to the capitalist mode of production but it is equally valid in a socialist economy. Second, a decline in the rate of profit in a socialist economy would engender crises as would be the case in a capitalist economy. Even more, he argues that crises would be necessary in any social form if there is a secular tendency of the organic composition of capital to rise.

Theodore P. Lianos (1995) agrees with the primary thesis of my paper (Khalil 1994), namely, if Karl Marx's theory is correct about the tendency of the rate of profit to fall in capitalist production, it should imply that all modes of production (including socialist production) also suffer from the tendency. Lianos raises two issues. One is secondary and the other is irrelevant.

Murray Rothbard's untimely death has deprived the economics profession of one of its most colorful, iconoclastic and therapeutic personalities. He helped to inspire a legion of dedicated followers to make Austrian economics a significant element in the intellectual and moral spectrum of economics. The Austrians never wavered in their criticism of Soviet-style economic organization, correctly arguing that such systems were working badly. Even so, can a sub-set of economists who eschew mathematics and econometrics win respect from the mainstream? The volumes under review (Rothbard 1995) certainly make a valiant effort in that direction. Rothbard's survey of economic thought extends from “the beginning” to Karl Marx and C. F. Bastiat. Occasional references indicate more was intended. Rothbard is critical of the “Great Man” focus of much of mainstream history of economic thought, and even more critical of the “Whig interpretation,” which sees the evolution of economic thought as progress toward the current near-perfect ideas and practices of our leading graduate schools.