Ronald Coase was in his early twenties when he developed his groundbreaking theory of the firm. This theory represented a new approach with no obvious precursors, but from where did it arise? This article traces the origins of Coase’s theory of the firm and provides a context for its formation. I argue that Coase’s arguments were rooted in the exchange of ideas in the Socialist Calculation Debate, and that, in this context, one could read his theory of the firm as an argument in defense of economic planning.

This paper offers a bibliographic survey of the literature in the history of economic thought (HET) in eight major economics journals, using the JEL classification to retrieve and analyze the relevant literature. Our study shows that, though contributions to HET are still found in top economics journals, the rate of publication of such papers has become increasingly uneven, and the methods and narrative styles they adopt are remote from those used by historians of economics. We show that the widespread idea that historians should address current economists by using their (mostly mathematical) tools and techniques is hardly present in mainstream journals, and discuss the role of editors and editorial boards of the different journals we survey in shaping these changes over time. We conclude that historians should focus on doing good work on their own, rather than try to figure out what the economists’ preferences are, and undertake research accordingly.

Michael Woodford's Interest and Prices: Foundations of a Theory of Monetary Policy (2003) is an important book. Woodford's title is, of course, a conscious revival of Wicksell's own famous work and it points to an effort to recast the analysis of monetary policy as centered on interest rates. I believe that Woodford's theoretical orientation is essentially correct. In repairing to Wicksell, he places the monetary aggregates into a more reasonable perspective, correcting the distortions of the monetarist and Keynesian diversions with respect to money. My money is, so to speak, where my mouth is: My own textbook-in-progress is also based around an IS/interest-rate rule/AS model, in which financial markets cleared by price rather than the LM curve are emphasized. Such an approach, as Woodford notes, has become standard in central banks, but has not yet captured either core undergraduate or graduate textbooks and instruction. My task here, however, was not to praise Woodford's economics nor to trace or evaluate its Wicksellian routes, but to consider Interest and Prices from a methodological point of view.

The author's path from heterodoxy to economic history to the history of economics is used as a case study to explore tensions between “doing economics” and “doing the history of economics,” between the ideological vision (Schumpeter) motivating a research agenda and the even-handed execution of research. These same tensions appear in the history of capital controversy, which contains deep questions of history and path dependence versus equilibrium models, limitations of aggregate production functions, and the roles of vision and ideology in the reluctance to abandon insights of one-commodity models when results are not robust.

Over the past two decades, technology and innovation have become common themes within the economic growth and economic development literatures. This renewed emphasis is highlighted by the developments in endogenous growth theory (Romer, 1986, 1990; Barro and Sala-I-Martin, 1995), but many have noted that its roots can, in part, be traced to the works of Joseph A. Schumpeter (Nelson and Winter, 1982; Blaug, 1986; Rostow, 1990; Cheng and Dinopoulos, 1992; Freeman 1994; Thanawala, 1994). Schumpeter's principal contributions include his theory that the creative response of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial innovation are the primary determinants of economic change. However, most argue that his vision of entrepreneurs is dichotomous, with one part corresponding to his European period, and the other to his American period (see, for example, Phillips, 1971; Klein, 1977; Nelson, 1977; Freeman, 1982, 1994; Swedberg, 1991; Scherer, 1992; Thanawala, 1994; Malerbaand Orsenigo, 1995). The initial part of his work, it is argued, focuses not on large firms and market structures, but on small firms and individual entrepreneurs. Here Schumpeter presents entrepreneurs as isolated, romanticized individuals who challenge the social system and indirectly propel society to greater economic heights. This period, it is argued, reflects the European half of his life. Schumpeter's American period begins with his stays at Harvard for the academic year of 1927-28, and for a greater part of the year 1930. It is generally argued that in this American period, Schumpeter altered his vision of economic development to accentuate the advantages of monopolistic competition, and to include large established corporations and government agencies as agglomerations capable of fulfilling the entrepreneurial function.

Over twenty years ago, I had the pleasure of speaking to the Royal Statistical Society about the life and work in statistics of Francis Ysidro Edgeworth. In a preamble to that talk, I commented upon some similarities between Edgeworth and an even earlier scientist, Daniel Bernoulli, who lived from 1700 to 1782. One similarity I mentioned would be so well-known to this audience that it scarcely bears repetition: Both Edgeworth and Bernoulli were important in the histories of both economics and statistics. Of Edgeworth's work in economics I need not comment—I expect that his work on taxation, price theory, international trade, and index numbers is familiar to many in this audience. Edgeworth's work in statistics was no less important in at least four ways: (1) He was an astute and original philosopher of the application of probability and quantitative thinking in social science; (2) he had sufficient mathematical genius to situate Galton's concept of correlation in the framework of the multivariate normal distribution, thereby pointing the way for Karl Pearson to develop correlational analysis—Edgeworth even has a claim on being the inventor of the product moment correlation coefficient; (3) he pioneered the exploration of many topics, such as variance component estimation, the theory of maximum likelihood, and series expansions for sampling distributions; and (4) he had an amazing ability to explore the limits of statistical concepts by constructing subtle and surprising counterexamples to widely accepted truths.

There can be no doubt that the monetary systems of a number of advanced countries nowadays resemble Knut Wicksell's (1898) model of the “pure credit economy” much more closely than did any that actually existed in the world for which he wrote. Currency has long been losing its quantitative importance in mediating transactions among the general public in such countries, and more recently, the development of modern information technology has made it possible for them to operate the clearing and settlement systems that underpin the use of bank deposits as means of exchange with a close-to-zero stock of reserve assets.

Generations of readers have nodded in agreement with Adam Smith’s argument, in Book One of the Wealth of Nations, that a nation cannot be happy if the workers who constitute the majority of its population are miserable. Smith notes that equity, besides, demands that workers receive a generous recompense for their labor. I contend that this famous statement is best interpreted in light of contemporary arguments that it was socially useful for workers to be poor. Smith’s engagement with these arguments is usually interpreted with reference to the labor supply function, but I argue that it also involved deeper suppositions about the place of workers in the social order. Smith’s reaction to these suppositions enriches our understanding of his contribution to liberal economics.

The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) was founded in 1920 and quickly came to be regarded as one of the leading economic research organizations in the world. The NBER still exists today and still enjoys a high reputation, but the NBER of today bears little resemblance to the organization it once was. Between 1920 and the present the NBER has undergone a number of significant changes in form, function, and direction, and this history is one that includes moments of considerable drama. There were times of great financial stress, to the point where the future existence of the organization was in doubt, times when the organization seemed to be able to maintain a highly favored financial status despite outside criticism, and times of sharp conflict between the Bureau and its financial patrons.

I review changes over time in the meaning that economists in the US attributed to the phrase “statistical inference,” as well as changes in how inference was conducted. Prior to WWII, leading statistical economists rejected probability theory as a source of measures and procedures to be used in statistical inference. Trygve Haavelmo and the early Cowles Commission econometricians developed an approach to statistical inference based on probability theory, but the arguments they offered in defense of this approach were not always responsive to the concerns of earlier empirical economists that the data available to economists did not satisfy the assumptions required for such an approach. Despite this, after a period of about twenty-five years, a consensus developed that methods of inference derived from probability theory were an almost essential part of empirical research in economics. I conclude with some speculation on possible reasons for this transformation in thinking about statistical inference.

Karl Marx was the greatest champion of the labor theory of value. The logical problems of this theory have, however, split scholars of Marx into two factions: those who regard it as an indivisible component of Marxism, and those who wish to continue the spirit of analysis begun by Marx without the labor theory of value. In the debate between these two camps, the former has attempted to draw support from Marx's concepts of value, while the latter has ignored them, taking instead as their starting point the truism that production generates a surplus. Nevertheless, a careful examination of the development of Marx's logic uncovers the profound irony that, after a chance rereading of Hegel, Marx made a crucial advance which should have led him to replace the labor theory of value with the theory that commodities in general are the source of surplus. Marx's value analysis is thus consistent, not with those who would defend the labor theory of value, but with those who would transcend it.

This paper reviews the way in which constructivist or anti-representationalist arguments have been used as an argument in favor of changing the way we write the history of economic thought. It is argued that though such arguments provide some important new perspectives on the subject, their use as a comprehensive methodological critique of “traditional” approaches to the subject rests on the theses that a non-foundationalist methodology is impossible, and that we can assume that contemporary economics is in a healthy state. If these theses are not accepted, the case against “traditional” histories collapses.

When trust is shaken, individuals pull back and the market system contracts. Where trust grows, individual energy and creativity are unleashed and the system grows. In Adam Smith’s vision of humankind’s progress, trust is the central theme.

The Great Recession represents a classic case of a crisis of trust. Looking back to the work of Smith offers insight into the role of citizens and the State in creating an fruitful market environment based on trust, and the challenge of this process, given the human frailty of individuals (unfortunately, we are not angels) and the potential for State power to be captured and abused.

One of the basic ideas underlying the established conception of rational behavior is the unlimited substitutability of preferences. Economic agents are assumed to compare and reduce everything to a common denominator: utility. The most obvious example of such preferences can be found in standard consumer theory where complete substitutability of every good is assumed in the sense that a loss of some units of one bundle can always be compensated by gain of some units of another commodity (such preferences are sometimes called Archimedian—see Borch 1968). This conception of preferences has a long history in economic thought and forms the basis of the standard rational choice theory (Hicks and Allen 1934, Samuelson 1938, Hicks 1946, Houthakker 1950).

David Ricardo was a peaceful man, well liked and admired for both his intellectual and his personal traits by his colleagues and rivals whether on the Stock Exchange, in the nascent field of political economy, or among the members of Parliament. He could maintain personal friendship and wellbehaved exchange of ideas with someone as far removed from him in both religion and economic doctrine as Thomas Malthus. The intellectual strength of his written work could dominate the thought of such a great mind as that of John Stuart Mill and rouse the writer Thomas de Quincey from his opiumriddled state to renewed mental vigor.

Our concern is John Stuart Mill's methodological pronouncements, his actual practice, and the relationship between them. We argue that verification played a key role in Mill's method, both in principle and in practice. Our starting point is the celebrated declaration regarding verification in the essay On the Definition of Political Economy; and on the Method of Investigation Proper to It (1836/ 1967; hereafter Essay): “By the method à priori we mean … reasoning from an assumed hypothesis; which … is the essence of all science which admits of general reasoning at all. To verify the hypothesis itself à posteriori, that is, to examine whether the facts of any actual case are in accordance with it, is no part of the business of science at all, but of the application of science” (Mill 1836/1967, p. 325). The apparent position that the basic economic theory is impervious to predictive failure emerges also in a sharp criticism of the à posteriori method:

This paper brings together and expands methodological ideas on Joseph Alois Schumpeter that I have discussed in detail and at length elsewhere (Shionoya 1997). Schumpeter is known for his wide-ranging work, and I interpret it as an attempt a universal social science consisting of three systems of thought: i.e., substantive theory, metatheory, and pretheory. These three systems stand for the scope and method of his universal social science.