In Wealth of Nations, a high rate of profit is associated with sluggish or even negative growth, and vice versa. This is because capital accumulation (and therefore population growth) is driven by parsimony of the masters; and the incentive to self-denial is eroded by a high income too easily obtained. The causal relation between parsimony, the rate of profit, and accumulation is explicated in this article; Adam Smith’s observations concerning “the merchants of Cadiz and Lisbon” examined critically; and some conjectures offered as to why Smith’s successors should have rejected parsimony as a useful concept.

In 1564, Leonhard Fronsperger, a military expert and citizen of the Free Imperial City of Ulm in Upper Germany, publishes the booklet “On the Praise of Self-Interest” (“Von dem Lob deß Eigen Nutzen”). Using the form of a satirical poem, he demonstrates how the individual pursuit of self-interest can lead to the common good. Writing long before Bernard Mandeville and Adam Smith, Fronsperger presents a thorough analysis of all kinds of self-interested social, political, and economic relations. His praise of self-interest demonstrates how, over the sixteenth century, the interplay of economic success (in particular in major trading cities), a more realistic conception of human behavior, and some aspects of humanism and the Reformation led to a new understanding of the origins of economic dynamics. This becomes the basis for what Max Weber ([1904–05] 2009) would later term “the spirit of capitalism.”

Our paper analyzes and compares two attempts at integrating unemployment in macroeconomics. The first, due to Peter Diamond, consists in a search model exhibiting multiple equilibria and wherein cycles may be produced. The second is due to David Andolfatto and Monika Merz, who, more or less simultaneously, constructed models enabling the integration of the matching function into RBC modeling. In the first sections, we present the methodology upon which our paper is based—Axel Leijonhufvud’s decision-tree insight—and briefly describe these three economists’ motivations and the context in which they were working. We continue with recounting the birth and further development of the search paradigm upon which Diamond’s, Andolfatto’s, and Merz’s attempts were based. These preliminaries settled, we address the heart of the paper, the critical analysis of their respective contributions. Our interest lies specifically in how they made their way in the development of the field. We explain why Diamond’s model, which ambitioned to rival Robert Lucas’s explanation of business fluctuations, did not live up to its author’s expectations. Andolfatto’s and Merz’s project was less ambitious, yet their model became an established component of the RBC program—but at the price of abandoning several constitutive traits of the search approach.

During the period 1871–1918, Sweden was under the in.uence, in many respects, of intellectual currents emanating from the German Empire. On the plane of economic policy many Swedish social scientists and public debaters were in.uenced by German Kathedersozialismus and state socialism. In Sweden, as in other countries, this heritage has long been tucked out of view in historical writings, perhaps because there was not much to boast about after the defeat of the “German model” in the First World War.1 Interest has begun to awaken in recent years, however. Leading economists such as Gustav von Schmoller and Adolph Wagner have attracted attention (see e.g., Backhaus 1997) and their in.uence in the United States has been examined (Carlson 1999, Rodgers 1998, and Senn 1997). In Sweden, too, interest in German Kathedersozialismus and state socialism is rising with respect to its in.uence on social scientists (Wisselgren 2000) and (social democratic) politicians (Karlsson 2001).

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.

Following World War II, the director of the social sciences division at the Rockefeller Foundation, the industrial economist Joseph H. Willits, thought it important to extend its activities to Europe, especially France. His agenda was to strengthen institutional economics and to create modern research centers with a view to stabilizing the political situation. In the postwar decade, almost all economic research centers in France were funded by the Foundation, which helped provide greater autonomy to French economists within academia but failed to reshape French economic training and research.

The historian of economics encounters special difficulties in dealing with a heterodox economist. When one considers someone who is orthodox, basic notions can be taken for granted, and this enables the historian to zero in on meaningful issues without first having to provide an extensive introduction dealing with fundamental notions which have to be understood if the significance of what is being said is to be grasped. On the other hand, if one omits this step when dealing with the heterodox the analysis is not likely to be very meaningful. This special difficulty is much compounded where the heterodoxy is methodological, as it is with Wesley Clair Mitchell. What Mitchell tried to do was to reconstruct economics, to convince economists to adopt a different approach to the very way they conduct their inquiries. John Stuart Mill had laid down the law that extensive observation of specific experience was of no help in the attempt to derive economic theory, and mainstream economists generally went along with him on this. Mitchell disagreed and attempted to show that by building on different foundations a more “scientific” and useful economics could be derived. The interesting question for the historian of economics is: What can we learn from Mitchell's experience? It is here that we run into the problem that I noted at the outset.

Nicolas Dutot (1684–1741) is an important figure for the history of economic thought, as a pioneer in monetary theory and price statistics, and for economic history, as a chronicler of John Law’s System. Yet, until recently, very little information about him was known, some of it incorrect. I present extensive research that reveals a remarkable career rising from humble origins and full of surprises. He spent his formative years in the ranks of the “ancienne finance” he was thought to despise, and then worked for the Chamber of Justice that he so decried in his writings, only to be sent to the Bastille for corruption. After working for Law’s Bank and then retiring quite comfortably, he continued to socialize with his pre-System financier and banker friends, at least for a while. He also joined a short-lived learned society and accumulated a substantial library that reveals much about his tastes and affinities. The portrait that emerges is at odds with the image of an honest accountant he tried to project, but also richer and more engaging.

Irving Fisher believed in evidence-based decision making. This paper considers how three aspects of Fisher’s methodology could be useful now in the quest to deal with U.S. financial instability: (1) his institutional approach; (2) his efforts to use index number theory as a means to improve official statistics data; and (3) his interest in automating aspects of data analyses. The paper concludes with a call to action for Fisher’s progeny. Actions to solve US financial instability are surely the most fitting possible tribute to Irving Fisher.

Many authors have interpreted Nassau Senio's ideas on abstinence through the years to mean that a cause/effect relation exists between interest and abstinence and that interest is the reward for abstinence. Some typical examples of this treatment are as follows: “The original abstinence theory of interest for which Senior is famous has long been recognized as the most complete of the classical theories, and under various names has become incorporated in the general corpus of economic theory” (Bowley 1937, p. 137). “Nassau Senior…introduced the ‘abstinence theory’ of interest, and he is criticized both for its one-sidedness and for using it to imply that the ‘pain’ of the capitalist is in some sense proportional to the ‘reward’ he ‘earns’ by abstaining. On page 189 of Political Economy, Senior describes abstinence as the cause of interest in terms which would readily explain this general interpretation, and in his public-policy pronouncements he further supports it” (Conard 1959, p. 26). “Senior's contribution to capital theory was to identify this reward for ‘abstinence’ as interest, or the cost of waiting, during which time capital could be accumulated. Senior's description of interest as a return to abstinence was his most original contribution to economics, and it soon became assimilated into the mainstream of economic theory. In it he surpassed Smith, Malthus and Ricardo and his analysis of capital and interest stood as the most complete in British economics until the time of Jevons” (Ekelund and Hébert 1975, p. 103).

This essay examines Frank Knight's view of monopolies in a market economy through an exegesis of his writings. A cogent development of Frank Knight's theory of monopolies is conspicuously absent in the economic literature. His prominence in the discipline and the influence his work has had on others establish his views as significant in the intellectural history of the theory of capitalist competition. The study focuses on Knight's characterization of monopolies and his views as to the appropriateness of coercive repressive regulatory policies. Also, capitalistic monopolies are discussed in the context of Knight's critical attitude toward economic and philosophic dogma and his disdain for centralized economic planning. The following section deals with the Knightian view of the nature of monopolies and categorization of types of monopolies. Then, the philosophical basis for Knight's position onmonopolies is presented. Specifically, the concentration of economic power in capitalism is explained in terms of Knight's perceptions of social reformers, static equilibrium analysis, and economic planning.

With the coming of marginal utility theory, the economists of the late nineteenth century were left with a theory of exchange values, but not with a theory of value. For example, William Stanley Jevons suggested that the concept of value be dropped from economics, leaving behind only vectors of exchange ratios (Jevons 1879). Not a few general equilibrium economists today hold much the same view. However, then, as today, there were seemingly fundamental economic questions that required a more general concept of value. Whenever economists turned to describing the movements in the economy over time or comparing the economies of different countries, they inevitably wanted to make statements about changes or differences in the real value of goods.

This investigation reveals certain modifications and extensions pertaining primarily to the disintegration of the social fabric of capitalist society developed by Schumpeter, with special emphasis on his writings between the years 1942 and 1949, just prior to his death in 1950. Three publications during the period which hold particular significance are Prime and Henderson (1975), “Schumpeter on Preserving Private Enterprise” (an address by Schumpeter to a group of Quebec businessmen in November 1945); J.A. Schumpeter, “The March into Socialism,” AER, May 1950 (a paper presented on December 30, 1949); and J.A. Schumpeter, notes on “American Institutions and Economic Progress,” (late 1949). These more recent views are exposed and compared with Galbraith's rationalizations on the contemporary corporate economy. It is well known that Schumpeter, the theorist, was willing to express tendencies but was hesitant to relate the specific outcome of the future of capitalism. However, Galbraith was quite precise in his interpretation of the transition to modern capitalism.

Karl Marx's theory of land rent plays a minor role in his overall economic system but provides us with a good opportunity to examine and score his analytic powers and attained understanding. The conclusion arrived at from the present reinvestigation confirms, I fear, the diagnosis that Marx was an autodidact who lacked mastery of the subject matter that he so confidently grappled with. Objective readers of my analysis can form their own judgments of Marx's written logic and empirical contentions.