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Barbara Bergmann was well known for many contributions to economics, but she was perhaps most famous for her 1971 occupational crowding hypothesis. The hypothesis was published during a surge of literature on the economics of discrimination, and it temporarily stood among the mainstream neoclassical theories before being relegated primarily to feminist and stratification economics. This article situates the crowding hypothesis among contemporary competing theories on the economics of discrimination and explains why it did not last in the mainstream camp. Despite Bergmann's neoclassical framing, the model's conclusions did not align with models of perfect competition and more closely aligned with heterodox perspectives on group power and conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of economics literature has few studies on how traveling impacts economists and their ideas. Much fewer still exist on the travels of lesser-known economists such as Romesh Chunder Dutt. Dutt (1848–1909) was the founder of agricultural economics in India, a civil servant in the imperial administration, a writer, and an early nationalist fighting for Indian independence. Dutt encouraged traveling because, according to him, if Indians were to see and experience progress in Europe they could better understand modernity. Indian travel writing, unlike the European counterpart, was about experiencing what Indians had learned about modernity at the imperial universities in India. And yet, when the Indian travelers went to Europe they observed modernity alongside poverty, something that modernity should have excluded. Travel and travel writing for imperial subjects like Dutt was an empowering act where the gaze of the other was reversed: Indians showed that they could now also observe and study the British subject. I argue that Dutt's travels ultimately provided him with a new method to examine the world and criticize the way it was organized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the impact of Frank Ramsey's 1928 article "A Mathematical Theory of Saving" on the economics profession of the 1960s. The article discusses reactions of economists to Ramsey's economic growth model and infers that Ramsey's use of advanced mathematics led to his portrayal as ahead of his time. The author tracks references to Ramsey in economics and finance journals in JSTOR (Journal Storage), specifically references to Ramsey's discussions of economic growth, taxation, and subjective probability and expected utility.

In this article the authors discuss the inattention to macroeconomist Trevor Swan and his economic growth model in favor of economist Robert Solow's. The authors talk about how only some publications refer to the "Solow-Swan" model instead of the "Solow" model. Particular attention is given to Swan's contribution to neoclassical growth theory, including Swan's background and early work on a growth model in 1950. The authors compare Solow and Swan's growth model from 1956 and examine why Swan's work received less attention than Solow's.

The article focuses on the origin of modern fishery economics. Particular attention is given to Danish economist Jens Warming's published and unpublished works on fisheries economics from the period of 1911 to 1938, including the problems of open access to a common property resource and his economic models. The author discusses how Warming attempted to make his contemporaries aware of his publications. A brief biography is presented for Warming. The article compares articles written by Warming in 1911 and by H. Scott Gordon in 1954.

The article discusses Walton H. Hamilton's idea of the public control of business. Hamilton introduced the term institutional approach to the economics literature in 1918. His interests covered economics and law. He stressed a problem-centered approach and a creative search for programs of control in all of his teachings. He was a member of the American Association for Labor Legislation. The most central of his arguments concerning institutional economics is economics should be relevant to the modern problem of control. He rejects neoclassical value theory as a useful tool for the investigation of the nature and functioning of the economic order.

This article focuses on the article written by Russian statistician and economist Eugen Slutsky that appeared in an Italian journal "Giornale delgi economisti." The first appreciation of Slutsky's work in the economic literature was economist Valentino Dominedo's long 1933 paper on the theory of demand. Dominedo devoted the last pages of this article to Slutsky's mathematical and theoretical exposition, and he was certainly the first author to have grasped the importance of Slutsky's paper. In an early article economist Umberto Ricci had considered a case in which a person's utility function was additively separable in the quantities. Instead of assuming diminishing marginal utility for all commodities, Ricci allowed one of the commodities to have at first increasing and subsequently decreasing marginal utility. The first published recognition of Slutsky's important paper in America may be found in Henry Schultz's 1935 article, "Interrelations of Demand, Price, and Income." Actually, it is known that Milton Friedman, a young research assistant to Schultz at Chicago, participated actively in this article and in the subsequent 1938 book.

The article presents a qualitative analysis of economic articles and articles on religious subjects in three journals in Great Britain. It informs that the evidence reveals a steep decline in the percentage of articles on religious subjects in the reviews; a small rise in the percentage of articles on economic subjects; and, the most significant finding, a sharp fall in the percentage of the latter devoted to economic theory. The decline in the percentage of articles devoted to religion undoubtedly reflects the tendency that has been analyzed exhaustively for decades, the secularization of European thought in the nineteenth century. After 1873, the rocky performance of the British economy, the success of which had been so closely linked with orthodox political economy, may have chilled the ardor for economic theory. Particularly disquieting was the fact that Britain appeared to be yielding ground to a nation that had eschewed free trade, imperial Germany. The related discovery in the 1880s, of extensive poverty in Britain also may have dampened enthusiasm for classical political economy.

Presents an address given by Edwin R.A. Seligman to fellow members of the Hobby Club of New York about the early economic literature in 1914. Importance of understanding the meaning of economic literature; Difference between consumptible and nonconsumptible commodities; Discussion of banking and trading activities.

This article discusses the preclassical theory of development and examines the relationship between consumption and production in the pre-Smithian economics literature, from late seventeenth century onward. The author tries to show that in this period consumption and production were usually seen in a relationship of mutually beneficial causation, that means, increased consumption is not only the result but also the cause of a greater production wealth, since it increases labor productivity. The author argues that most of the thinkers of the said period are in favor of increased consumption, both by the middle class and the working classes, because they consider it an incentive for the spirit of enterprise and industriousness. He further argues that pre-Smithians have a different concept of subsistence wage from the classical school. On the other hand, various Enlightenment thinkers regard increased consumption by wage earners and the professional classes as what contemporary thinkers would call an investment in human capital aimed at increasing labor productivity.

This article focuses on the economic methodologies employed by economists Thomas Robert Malthus and David Ricardo and explores the controversy between them. According to the author, Malthus' and Ricardo's "laws of economic science" are partly overlapping. In practice, while exceptions are admitted by Malthus for almost all economic laws, for Ricardo even contingent predictions allow no exceptions, apart from temporary variations that, being distributed randomly through different historical phases, are best dealt with by leaving them in the limbo of the unscientific. There was a sustained conflict between two economists both professing adherence to the same Newtonian paradigm. One of the reasons behind this might be varieties of eighteenth-century Newtonianism. Moreover, Ricardo avowed his exclusive interest in "permanent states," as opposed to Malthus who concentrated on what happens in the "intervals." The shared concept of proportions receives different overtones resulting from the divergent choices which means that for Ricardo, economics is a science of proportions, dealing with laws that regulate shares of the national product allotted to the three main classes and the optimal proportion is the object of the science.

The article dwells on the role of joint products in economist Adam Smith's explanation of the "vent-for-surplus" doctrine of gains from trade. According to the author, joint products as free goods do give us an explanation of how a surplus might be consistent with Smith's competitive system, but they are only consistent with international trade, greatly augmenting the total value of a country's produce in underdeveloped regions. Moreover, they never provide an explanation of the unemployment of productive labor that concerned Smith. According to the author, in Smith's discussions of trade venting surplus joint products for underdeveloped regions, he never indicates that unemployment occurs in these regions. Therefore, joint products argument for the vent for surplus is not a general explanation for this case. The author further maintains that there are a great many examples in the book "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith, that give weight to the argument that Smith had actual distorted markets in mind when he suggested his vents with their employment and value effects, as gains from trade.

The article focuses on the dichotomy between economists Adam Smith and John Rae's generalization of "accumulation" and "invention" relating to growth of income. Smith's generalization, according to economist Anthony Brewer, focuses on accumulation as the only independent source of the growth of income and division of labour is simply a consequence of this accumulation, which in turn gives rise to invention. Considering Smith's generalization, Rae is exact opposite, who maintains that technological change or invention is the only independent source of the growth of income. The author is of the view, however, that accumulation as seen both by Smith and Rae, largely depends on psychological attitude of the people, and so it is not directly dependent on the policy of the state. Though both Smith and Rae suggest higher taxation on luxuries to reduce extravagance and encourage saving, both are aware of its limited effectiveness. In this regard, Rae's emphasis on the role of invention in economic development, which is very much amenable to the policy of the legislators, seems to hold ground.

The article focuses on economic theories of economist John Maynard Keynes relating to income and employment by an economist Frederick Barnard Hawley. Keynes, according to economist Don Patinkin, put forward the proposition that a decline in output caused by excess aggregate supply will reduce supply more than demand and bring the economy to equilibrium at less than full employment. The equilibrating effect of the contraction in aggregate income is the core of Keynes' theory of effective demand and is based on the assumption that the marginal propensity to consume is less than one. But, according to the author, Hawley in his book "Enterprise and the Productive Process," published in 1907 had already pointed out this adjustment mechanism. In this book, he made it clear that excess aggregate supply would gradually be removed by a reduction of income greater than the decline in spending. He further explained the adjustment between aggregate production and consumption by the postulate of an established standard of living. Hawley further assumed that the short-run marginal propensity to consume is lower than the long-run one, since individuals do not fully adjust consumption spending when income change is unexpected.

The article presents evidence that economist Adam Smith paid considerable attention on commutative justice and social justice in his literary works concerning feudalism, mercantilism, taxation and policy formulations. It is asserted that Smith in his political economy literature eliminated concern for distributive justice from the agenda of a legislator. He, nevertheless, asserted that governments should simply focus on ensuring that dealings between individuals are equitable. Undoubtedly, Smith's major emphasis is on justice in individual exchanges or commutative justice. In a developing economy, the potential for conflict between the distributive and commutative justice is greatly diminished if government pays close attention to the commutative aspect. Smith finds existing patterns of wealth and income shares far from optimal because of the continuance of mercantilist regulation, certain taxes and remnants of feudalism in the agriculture sector. However, Smith's stress on legislative attention to commutative matters should not be taken as a rejection of the relevance of distributive justice for political economists.

In this article the author focuses on economist David Hume's case for free trade which was based on the analysis of technical change particularly on the interaction between international trade and technical change. The specific elements and characteristics of his science of man must be placed at the center of any attempt to evaluate either his relevance for present international economic theory or his distinctive position within the longstanding debate on the relative advantages and disadvantages of greater economic openness. Hume's examination of the interaction between international trade and technical change emerges as an important element to expand his examination of the range, variety and complexity of the social interactions governing these processes. Hume asserts that foreign trade is as necessary to the technological vitality and development of rich countries as it is to the vitality and development of poor countries. Hume's speculations on interactions between growth in, and trade among, mature economies constitutes an important episode in the recurring discussion of increasing returns to scale as opposed to technical change as a potential source of mutually beneficial trading opportunities and international peace.

In this article the author examines economies Adam Smith's theory that division of labor has deleterious effect on the work force. Smith's theory asserts that extended division of labor will eventually cause workers to reduce their cultural understanding, injure their moral behavior, relax their martial spirit and make them despise education. The learned journals witnessed a controversy over the meaning of Adam Smith's "second thoughts" on the virtues of capitalism's division of labor. Smith's criticisms of capitalism which are continually emphasized in much Western literature to the present day confuse Eastern European readers. The author informs that scholars Adam Ferguson and Karl Marx developed the idea of demerits of division of labor in a capitalist economy. The author also discusses conflicting views found in writings of Smith. On the one hand, Smith appears to be heavily influenced by classical scholarship that encourages almost unqualified admiration of the early Greek republics and Roman states with their emphasis on discipline and order. While on the other hand, Smith appears to be a supporter of a liberal state that abandons protectionism, authoritarianism and slavery to establish the rule of law, respect for contracts, private property and liberty.

In this article the author discusses reasons behind little importance given to entrepreneurs in economics literature and ignorance of their role in an economy by economists. The author tries to uncover some analytical shortcoming of neoclassical economics in order to account for its unsatisfactory approach to entrepreneurship. The absence of entrepreneurs in economics literature is attributed to three major factors. The first factor has to do with the modern theory of the firm which carried with it assumptions that were incompatible with the exercise of entrepreneurship. The second set of explanation argues that so long as economic analysis is preoccupied with the nature of static equilibrium under conditions of perfect competition, there is no room for a theory of entrepreneurship. The third factor explaining absence of entrepreneurship from economic literature is the method of economics which attempted to emulate the physical sciences by incorporating the mathematical model and thus squeezing the role of an entrepreneur.

In this article the author discusses dichotomies found in scholar Friedrich August von Hayek's economic literature concerning monetary theory. The monetary theory of the trade cycle, from which his ideas on information and coordination developed, was long regarded as one of those blind alleys of economic speculation. In comparison to Robert E. Lucas' business cycle theory, Hayek's monetary theory of the trade cycle looks rich in structure and challenging in its claims and even various recent examinations in recent years indicate that it merits closer scrutiny in its own right. Hayek's theory asserts that governments should refrain from stimulating booms and counteracting recessions with active monetary policy, as this only causes or aggravates crises. Hayek favored credit restriction, even though he was skeptical about the practicality of a neutral money policy. Hayek's explanation of the business cycle contains a specific combination of a Wicksellian cumulative process, a Bohm-Bawerkian structure of production, a Cantillon effect of changes in the money supply on the price structure and a Ricardo effect of a shortage of consumption goods on the production of investment goods. The purpose of this article is to analyze Hayek's dichotomy by dividing his theory into four sections namely its Wicksellian origin, its specific flaws, its inconsistencies with his policy conclusions and its role in the progress of economic theory.

The population theory of economist T.R. Malthus, which proposed that population increase outstrips means of subsistence, was the source of several significant debates in the early nineteenth century. Malthus' population principle, considered by the "Westminster Review" in July 1825 to be one of "the most important principles in the science of political economy" clearly underpinned the iconoclastic 1834 Poor Law Reform Act. The major critics of Malthusian population theory and, more widely, classical political economists in this period included the British proto-socialists, the Owenites. This article investigates the extent to which the relationship between Owenism and Malthusianism was simply one of mutual antagonism. Given the dominant view in the secondary literature of a dichotomy between Owenism and Malthusianism, or more accurately, pro-Malthusian political economists and anti-Malthusian Owenites, this article examines the complex nature of this difference, including different theories about the importance of diminishing returns in agriculture, appropriate agricultural technology, rates and prospects of population growth, and prospects of excessive population growth in Owenite communities specifically. The article also tests the oppositional model of the relationship between Owenism and Malthusianism by a close examination of dialogues between various Owenites and political economists during this period. This article highlights the inadequacy of the historiography that has characterized the relationship between a homogeneous Owenism and Malthusianism political economy as simply one of mutual enmity.

The article presents views of the professor of mathematics and natural philosophy John Bradford Cherriman on economics literature written by economists Augustin Cournot and Joseph Bertrand. Cherriman published a ten-page review of Cournot in the "Canadian Journal of Industry, Science and Art" in 1857. In the article, "The Cournot-Bertrand Debate: A Historical Perspective," economist Jean Magnan de Bornier corrects widespread misunderstandings of Cournot and Bertrand's review of Cournot's and Leon Wairas's works, which is translated as an appendix to his article. Cherriman praised Cournot's application of mathematics to political economy, and he claimed to value Cournot's contribution above that of English economist David Ricardo or any other economic writer since Adam Smith. Cherriman discusses Cournot's theories of demand as a function of price, profit maximization by a monopolist, instability of equilibrium under duopoly, and the incidence of direct and indirect taxation under competition and monopoly. Cherriman's review of Cournot is by far the most extended notice of Cournot by a University of Cambridge mathematician. Economists and game theorists typically know Bertrand only for his review of Cournot. While Bertrand's review of Cournot was neither as early nor as clear in its understanding of Cournot as Cherriman's, Bertrand made a noteworthy contribution by showing that there are strategic games for which a solution consisting of a pure strategy cannot be found.

In this article the author traces origins of socialist Thomas Hodgskin's theories of political economy which were against nascent industrial capitalism and capitalist exploitation. According to the author the purpose of this article is neither to extend nor revise the debate concerning Hodgskin's contribution to post-Ricardian economic theory generally or economist Karl Marx's thought in particular. Instead, it is meant to relocate the source of these ideas and to recover their connection to eighteenth-century epistemology and moral philosophy. To a previously unrecognized extent, the causal relationship that Hodgskin understood to exist between cognition and action formed the foundation for his attacks upon orthodox political economy. Hodgskin's most famous claim is that all laborers possess a "natural right" to the whole produce of their labor. However, it is equally, if not more, important to him to elaborate the "natural law" whereby human progress depends upon both the increase of knowledge and the expansion of population. Like Marx, Hodgskin is anxious to lift the veil of linguistic obscurantism that had been thrown over production relationships. In his later years Hodgskin got increasingly concerned with the question of property rights in a more orthodox vein and less so with the issues of distribution and exchange. However, it is clear that, like other political radicals and popular political economists, he was engaged in a discourse on virtue as well on political economy.

In this article the author highlights the importance given to the concept of institutional analysis and individualism by the economist Adam Smith. Traditional interpretation of economics concentrated on Smith's analysis of the operation of competitive markets within a static institutional framework. Drawing on discussions in the philosophy of science concerning the substantive nature of social explanation, the author suggests a simpler and more unified way to characterize Smith's mode of explanation. He explains that Smith's approach to social explanation cannot be adequately characterized in terms of either methodological individualism or holism alone, but only as embodying what economist Joseph Agassi first termed "institutional individualism." After providing a simplified outline of tenets of institutional individualism, the author sets out to document textual evidences to substantiate his claim, probing closely the nature of Smith's social explanation. He asserts that Smith did not make a conscious efforts to develop a methodological argument in favor of institutional individualism but that his mode of social explanation can be reconstructed and best appreciated in these terms. Adam Smith was an early pioneer of institutional individualism as a mode of social explanation. This formulation not only allows characterization of his doctrines in more economic language, but also substantially helps understand them from a synthetic point of view.

The article examines whether economist Adam Smith's thoughts and theories were in fact rooted in philosophical presupposition as alleged by his critics. According to the author of this article, Smith's work was deeply influenced by the metaphysics of mechanistic Newtonianism. However, a mechanistic metaphysics cannot have been the only philosophical influence on Smith. Therefore, the article also examines the possibility that Smith's understanding of reality was powerfully shaped by deism and natural law philosophy. It explores an essential element of Smith's view of human nature, one that he shares with twentieth-century economists. Like his contemporaries, philosophical cosmology provided Smith with the unifying principles for his moral and economic theories. He consistently presupposed society to be one part in a single grand mechanical system. The author asserts that Smith's economic theory was permeated by aspects of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment world view or metaphysics. Moreover because of inconsistencies within the eighteenth-century Enlightenment world view philosophy, a contradiction is found in Smith's own economic theories.