The concept of bounded rationality has been at the forefront of a recent empiricist program in economics which under the heading of ‘behavioral economics ‘ seeks to broaden the rational choice paradigm in the direction of psychology, to the neglect of a similar broadening in the direction of sociology. While a small but increasing number […]
As a concept, transaction costs are used in numerous ways in economics, from simply referring to the fees charged by a financial broker to a much broader concept encompassing the comparative efficiency of alternative modes of resource allocation and economic coordination.
At the most general level, transaction costs are the costs that arise beyond the point […]
Postmodernism is a concept which escapes encyclopaedic definition, to the extent that mischievous commentators have described postmodernists as a club of individuals tacitly colluding in a refusal to collectively define what postmodernism is about. This should strike a cord with economists who have also been accused at one point or another of leaving central notions […]
The use of economic insights to elucidate legal doctrine has become so widespread that ‘law and economics’ is now one of the principal forms of jurisprudence. Most influential in this field has been what has become known as the Chicago school, typically identified with the work of Richard Posner. Though Posner must take the greatest […]
The way in which monetary policy is understood, both in practice and in the theoretical literature, has evolved in significant ways over the last few decades. Most significant, arguably, is an increasing awareness of the importance of the presentation of monetary policy. Central bankers have long been aware of the importance of the signalling effect […]
Robert Skidelsky, author of a key biography of Keynes, notes in this biography that Keynes’s relationship to modernism is crucial to the understanding of his work, yet difficult to grasp historiographically. This may be true if one seeks to uncover influences from modernism as as a socio-cultural movement on the content of Keynes’s economics. It […]
Encouraged by the actual perusal* of a short intellectual biography of Helen Makower that I published a while ago, here an updated and significantly revised version. Makower was an economist with a fair bit of impact on 20th economics but now completely forgotten, just a few years after her death.
Link: Makower.pdf
Bibliographical details, revised biography:
Klaes, […]
The recent literature evaluating Coase’s work in the light of evolutionary economics has come to distinguish between two Coasean traditions, one appropriated by the economic mainstream, the other identifying a significant heterodox potential. It is the aim of this chapter to take the latter reception of Coase’s legacy as the starting point for exploring his […]
This chapter provides an introduction to historiographical reflection in the history of economics in the context of selected wider debates in general history, philosophy, and the history of science. Historiographical reflection in the history of economics can proceed in several directions. What is it that distinguishes history of economics from the history of science, for […]
One important question regarding individual research strategy in scientific research is which explanatory categories of a given model or framework to maintained, revise, or discard at any given moment in time. On the one hand, this seems to be largely a question of ‘what works’ for the practicing scientist. On the other hand, economic research […]