This paper traces interpersonal utility comparisons and bargaining in the work of John Harsanyi from the 1950s to the mid-1960s. As his preoccupation with how theorists can obtain information about agents moved from an approach centered on empathetic understanding to the more distanced perspective associated with game theory, Harsanyi shifted emphasis from the social scientist’s lack of information vis-à-vis agents to agents’ lack of information about each other. In the process, he provided economists with an analytical framework they could use to study problems related to the distribution of information among agents while consolidating the perspective of a distant observer whose knowledge can replace that of real people.

Through his philosophical treatises, John Locke is perceived as the founder of political liberalism. However, from a different perspective, he can also be seen as a mercantilist. To show that there is no complete incompatibility between Locke’s philosophical treatises and his economic essay, I stress the central role of money. Money leads to a conflict, which is usually described as a conflict between “haves” and “have nots” (Macpherson 1962; Vaughn 1980; Caffentzis 1989). I complete this analysis showing that the introduction of money in the state of nature also leads to an uncommon conflict within the owners’ class between “landed men” and “moneyed men.” I also argue that this transition from a state of peace to a state of unrest leads to the establishment of a government whose role is to avoid the escalation of the conflict into a state of war.

From the 1920s to the 1980s, Dr. Eveline Mabel Burns made significant contributions to the discipline of economics. During her career, she taught at world-class universities, including the London School of Economics and Columbia University. She published in the fields of labor economics, general economic theory, economic forecasting, methodology, and social security in leading economic journals. In the 1930s, she began her work in establishing the social security system in the United States. Yet, despite this multitude of accomplishments, the work of Eveline Mabel Burns is barely discernible in accounts of the evolution of twentieth-century economics. This essay remedies that neglect by explicating her career and economics. First, it describes her early years as an economist as she determined the ultimate course of her professional career. Second, it outlines the hybrid institutional method of analysis she used. Third, it describes how she made use of this methodology in her work on social security. Finally, it concludes with an interpretation of her neglect in twentieth-century economics that highlights her gender and her use of institutional methods of analysis.

In this paper we investigate Werner Stark’s sociology of knowledge approach in the history of economic thought. This paper explores: 1) the strengths and weaknesses of Stark’s approach to historiography, 2) how this can frame an understanding of mercantilist writings, and 3) the development of a link between a pluralist understanding of economics and the sociology of knowledge approach. The reason for developing this link is to extend the sociology of knowledge approach to encompass a pluralist understanding of economic theorizing and, at the same time, clarify the link between context and economic theory. John Maynard Keynes’s practice of building narratives of intellectual traditions as evidenced in The General Theory is used to develop a position between an understanding of history of economic thought as the evolution of abstract and decontextualized economic theorizing and the view of economic theory as relevant only within the social conditions from which it arose.

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.

The Latin terms commonly used to signify “risk” are absent from Thomas Aquinas’s economic writings. Instead, Aquinas offers a lexicon of probability, prudence, and danger. This ternary lexicon brings with it a triple universalization of risk: first, a universalization through activity, including the activity of analysis considered as part of economic activity; second, a universalization through the agents, since everyone—the observer, the co-contractors, the prince, and the population—is affected by the risk; and, third, a partial universalization of its definition, since the lexicon indicates a risk that is not yet restricted by calculation, as the modern notion is, although some distinctions are already made by Aquinas. However, the lexicon describes only a risk of loss and does not take into account chance of gain.

In contrast to the common maxims for good taxation, Antonio De Viti de Marco revolutionized public finance studies by placing collective economic activity within a theoretical framework and trying to explain concrete fiscal phenomena such as tax incidence or public debt. The polar cases of cooperative and monopolistic states and the state factor of production are usually considered characteristics of such a framework. Here, we remark that De Viti’s theory of the cooperative state appears grounded only on the principles of minimum means and of political competition, and on the assumption that individual income is a proxy of individual consumption of general public services. Thus, it appears that the characteristics might be inessential to the real core of his theoretical framework. Moreover, we claim that his theoretical framework was not actually applied in his explanation of concrete fiscal phenomena. Finally, we remark that he seldom employed marginal tools in his Principî.

The paper is dedicated to Suzanne de Brunhoff’s monetary thought and shows how her analysis of very concrete monetary and financial problems of her time led her to develop the most innovative contributions to Marxist theory of money since classical Marxism. Concepts such as non-contemporaneity of capitalism with itself, pseudo-social validation, conflict centralization, or State management of money and labor power reflect her profound analysis of the ways capitalism generates very particular relations to space and time. By looking at this spatio-temporal dimension of de Brunhoff’s concepts, this paper aims to reveal the novelty, power, and fruitfulness of her monetary analysis. The first part of the paper seeks to define the meaning of the concept of general equivalent, drawing on her reading of Karl Marx’s Capital, before situating her approach in relation to institutionalist theories of money. The second part considers de Brunhoff’s analysis of the particular time-spaces of capitalism.

A recent comparative study of the economists' participation in government, draws negative conclusions with respect to this profession in Italy. The Italian case was shown to have been weak both in the teaching of economics at University level and lacking in the provision of a clearly defined and a highly specialized academic training. The complaint that Italian economists were generally devoted to teaching microeconomics, rather than macroeconomics, which is more strongly linked to political and productive demands, has often been heard.