John Maynard Keynes’s analysis of the Great Depression has strong parallels to recent theorizing about the post-2008 Great Recession. There are also remarkable similarities between the two historical episodes: the collapse of demand for new fixed investment, the role of the zero lower bound liquidity trap in hampering conventional monetary policy, the multi-year period of near-zero short-term rates, and the protracted period of subnormal prosperity. A major difference between then and now is that monetary authorities in the recent situation actively pursued an unconventional policy with massive purchases of long-term securities. Keynes couldn’t convince authorities of his era to pursue such a plan, but it was precisely the monetary policy he advocated for a depressed economy stuck at the zero lower bound of nominal interest rates.

This paper deals with a debate among Ralph George Hawtrey, John Richard Hicks, and John Maynard Keynes concerning the capacity of the central bank to influence the short-term and the long-term rates of interest. Both Hawtrey and Keynes considered the central bank’s ability to influence short-term rates of interest. However, they do not put the same emphasis on the study of the long-term rates of interest. According to Keynes, long-term rates are influenced by future expected short-term rates (1930, 1936), whereas for Hawtrey ([1932] 1962, 1937, 1938), long-term rates are more dependent on the business cycle. Short-term rates do not have much effect on long-term rates, according to Hawtrey. In 1939, Hicks enters the controversy, giving credit to both Hawtrey’s and Keynes’s theories, and also introducing limits to the operations of arbitrage. He thus presented a nuanced view.

Many commentators have pointed out the presence of a tension, even a contradiction or inconsistency, between two theses advanced by Friedrich Hayek: that the growth of institutions ought to be spontaneous rather than consciously designed, and that the conscious design of a constitution is necessary, so as to secure a desirable social order. Our paper shows via textual analysis that, far from being irreconcilable, these two theses, on the contrary, complement each other.

The aim of this essay is to assess James Medbery MacKaye’s contribution to socialist thought during the Progressive Era. Largely forgotten today, MacKaye proposed a special version of socialism, which he called “Pantocracy,” based on a peculiar blend of utilitarian and eugenic assumptions. Specifically, MacKaye held that biological fitness mapped to the capacity for happiness—biologically superior individuals possess a greater capacity for happiness—and saw the eugenic breeding of “a being or race of beings capable in the first place of happiness” as a possibility open by the advent of Pantocracy. Incidentally, this essay provides further evidence that the influence of eugenic and racialist beliefs upon the American Progressive Era political economy was so deep-rooted and pervasive that it did cut across traditional ideological boundaries.

The Ricardian dynamics are based on the study of the order of cultivation when demand increases. Piero Sraffa criticized David Ricardo for having assumed that the incoming method is defined by a natural order, and stressed that the law of succession of methods is based on a profitability criterion. Then, in the case of intensive cultivation, the question is whether the incoming method is indeed more productive than the one it replaces. Sraffa’s argument relies on the positivity of rent. However, there is a flaw in his reasoning, and a failure of the Ricardian dynamics is possible. Post-Sraffian scholars have misunderstood that construction and have substituted a static approach for it. The critiques they address to Sraffa are better understood by returning to Ricardo and Sraffa’s own methodology. Fifty years ago, mathematicians rediscovered Ricardo’s approach independently and worked out a powerful algorithm inspired by it.

The early 1620s trade crisis had a significant influence on the way public opinion in England regarded economic issues, and the pamphlets written during that period convey the impression that the supply of money was the undisputed primary concern of economic policy. However, monetary matters occupied a prominent position in the political agenda of England only during times of crisis, when the kingdom faced a perceived threat of demonetization. The paper argues that, during the first two decades of the seventeenth century, concern with a positive balance of trade was of only secondary importance, being normally overshadowed by a more fundamental goal: a well-ordered, stable, and properly managed trade. This opened the door for debates about the limits of free initiative and regulation in economic affairs, as evidenced most clearly by the debates about free trade and monopolies that permeated James I’s reign.

In a recent article Luca Fiorito and Cosma Orsi accused John R. Commons of anti-Semitism “within a broad and xenophobic framework.” They rested their indictment on three sources: an interview in which Mark Perlman spoke of his father, Selig; Commons’s report on immigration for the United States Industrial Commission; and Commons’s book Races and Immigrants. This comment, looking at the same sources, finds confusion about the meanings of anti-Semitism and xenophobia as they are applied to Commons.