The abolition of slavery in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was a long process. In terms of the economic views of abolitionists, there has been an excessive focus on the economic ideas of liberal abolitionists and their approach to “Civilization, Christianity, and Commerce.” However, there was a “developmental abolitionism” that has received little attention. Afro-American Martin R. Delany and Liberian James S. Payne were writers who approached abolitionism through this developmentalism. They favored more interventionist measures aimed at building the material power and national autonomy of Black nations to undercut the power of slave-using African chiefs, to provide indigenous Africans with employment, and to undermine the profitability of slave-based cotton production in the Americas. They also implicitly and indirectly approached labor scarcity with solutions ranging from promoting labor-saving technology to cultivating national prosperity that would improve emigration to Africa or increase birth rates.

Commitment to the behaviorist approach to utility theory, to the usefulness of mathematics in economic analysis, and to equalization of the marginal utility of income as a principle of just taxation brought Irving Fisher and Ragnar Frisch to attempt to measure the marginal utility of income and led them to collaborate in forming the Econometric Society and sponsoring the establishment of the Cowles Commission, institutions advancing economic theory in connection to mathematics and statistics, and led Frisch to pioneer an axiomatic approach to utility and microeconomic theory.

Luigi Einaudi was an authoritative Italian economist and a leading representative of economic and political liberalism in Europe. After the Second World War, he became governor of the Bank of Italy and president of the Italian Republic. This paper analyzes his role as opinion maker from the end of the nineteenth century until the 1920s, when he was a leading columnist at La Stampa and the Corriere della Sera, the most influential newspapers in Italy at that time. It focuses on the scope and limits of Einaudi’s efforts to broaden consensus in Italian public opinion on the principles of economic liberalism and free competition. To this end, it investigates Einaudi’s journalistic style, his views on the role of the newspapers, and his large following among the public. Further sections analyze the main issues tackled by Einaudi in his articles in the Corriere and the systematic work of propaganda he enacted during World War I to convince the Italian households to reduce consumption and to finance the military expenditure. A final section deals with the “reconstruction program” devised by Einaudi in the early 1920s with the aim of restoring price stability and fiscal restraint, his efforts in the Corriere to propagate this program, and his forced retreat from journalism after the beginning of the fascist regime in 1924–25.

This study deals with the debate that took place among Italian economists and statisticians at the turn of the twentieth century on the economic effects of mass emigration. In particular, it is focused on a controversy between Vilfredo Pareto and Alberto Beneduce on the one side, and Francesco Coletti on the other. It analyzes the way these scholars struggled with: (i) the problem of properly elaborating a specific cost-benefit analysis regarding emigration; and (ii), as a consequence, the problem of recognizing a clear set of economic policies designed to manage the complex economic and social processes connected to emigration. The paper demonstrates the enduring character of the problems encountered in the early Italian debates by showing that these questions are similar to those debated in the vast literature developed from the 1950s on the subject of brain drain, and suggests an explanation for the lack of conclusive results in this literature. We think that it is possible to understand this impasse by highlighting that in the analyzed literature, a problem of “fallacy of composition” emerges between the microeconomics and macroeconomics of emigration.

This paper focuses on the intellectual path through which Raúl Prebisch placed industrialization at the center of his economic thought and policy recommendations. It shows how the changing international context of the 1930s and 1940s made him depart from laissez-faire and adopt countercyclical policies, gradually abandoning the agrarian export-led growth model and finally embracing industrialization as the new growth strategy for Argentina and Latin America.

It has been established that the neoliberal creed arising in the interwar and early postwar years, despite its strong rejection of economic planning, also entailed a rejection of laissez-faire liberalism. This article argues that recent attempts at construing early neoliberalism as thus being a more nuanced or moderate creed than later iterations are nonetheless flawed. The “dual argument” of early neoliberalism indicated a new approach to market liberalism in which the state was not seen as the market’s opposite but rather its precondition. This important move is obscured by the language of moderation and nuance. In place of “the radicalization thesis,” the second part of the article considers Philip Mirowski’s concept of a “double-truth doctrine” and argues that an appreciation of the state for social and economic governance is a common feature of different neoliberalisms, which nonetheless differ in their preferred policy suggestions for the use of state power.

Evelyn Forget is among the “women of value” working in the economics profession. Her work has always been on the interface between theory and policy. It focuses on how economic tools and language can be mobilized to ensure that all members of society have access to the resources and services that allow us to live with dignity. Her contributions on the issue fall into two areas: history of economics, and health and social policy research. Her work in the latter area has earned her the titles of Officer of the Order of Canada and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Her most recent research focuses on the issue of basic income, which in Canada really means a form of targeted guaranteed income. Her 2018 book Basic Income for Canadians was shortlisted for the 2018–19 Donner Prize. In 2020, she updated the book to focus on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her latest book, Radical Trust: Basic Income for Complicated Lives, co-written with Hannah Owczar, was published in 2021.