This paper examines Douglass North’s evolving recommendations for economic development policy. Using archival material, it traces how North’s historical analysis of economic growth shaped his policy prescriptions from the start of his career through the 1990s. In the 1950s and 1960s, North attributed US economic growth primarily to trade and productivity gains driven by the United States’s competitive market system and international trade, leading him to advocate market-oriented reforms. But from the 1970s onward, recognizing the critical role of institutions through his study of institutional history, he emphasized reducing transaction costs through extensive reforms in property rights and political systems. His archives reveal how his historical understanding of development made him increasingly skeptical of simplistic, market-oriented reforms, and underscore the originality of his policy proposals for Latin America and Eastern Europe in the 1980s and 1990s.

This paper investigates the teaching of Walrasian general equilibrium theory in the early twentieth century through an analysis of three treatises: Arthur Bowley’s The Mathematical Groundwork of Economics (1924), Gustav Cassel’s The Theory of Social Economy (1924), and Étienne Antonelli’s Principes d’économie pure (1914). Despite their original contributions, the three works were also intended to be read by students. Examining these treatises contributes to a historical understanding of pre-war economics education literature and sheds light on the evolution of mathematical economics, particularly within the context of the educational process. The paper concludes that while all three treatises presented Léon Walras’s general equilibrium framework, they simultaneously reflected diverse fundamental beliefs about economic science, such as its objective and scope. Notably, there was no singular dominant group appropriating Walras’s model. However, a content analysis revealed structural similarities among the treatises.

This paper examines the household economics of Tomoko Matsudaira, a Japanese female economist, with a specific focus on the issue of wise consumption within Matsudaira’s expenditure theory. The exploration includes Matsudaira’s definition and criteria for wise consumption, her perspectives on consumer cooperatives guiding wise consumption within the household, her views on the influence of the consumer environment outside the household, and consumer awareness of wise consumption. This paper is the first ever investigation of Matsudaira’s views on wise consumption in English, and it primarily relies on Matsudaira’s debut work, Household Economics (1925a), but also references her later works to discern whether Matsudaira’s perspectives on wise consumption changed or developed over her more than forty years of research in household economics. This paper aims to provide theoretical insights into wise consumption by exploring Matsudaira’s discussions on household economics.

During his life, Friedrich Hayek drastically changed his evaluation of Aristotle’s role in the history of political and economic thought. Initially considering Aristotle as one of the forerunners of the liberal tradition, he then came to consider Aristotle’s philosophy as the source of collectivist thought. By examining both published and unpublished materials, this article shows that Hayek’s attack on Aristotle in The Fatal Conceit is authentic and puts Hayek’s affirmations on Aristotle in the context of his intellectual development. Hayek’s rejection of Aristotle can be related to his increasing emphasis on the abstract nature of the rules governing complex phenomena. However, this does not explain why Hayek felt compelled to take such a stance on an ancient philosopher who was highly esteemed in the school he belonged to. Hayek’s abandonment of the established view on the Aristotelian roots of the Austrian school can be better understood by considering the intellectual environment of his time. His eventual adoption of Karl Popper’s point of view on Aristotle meant taking a stance against Karl Polanyi’s democratic socialism and distancing himself from Wilhelm Röpke’s Catholic conservatism.

By exploring Adam Smith’s considerations of arts, this paper stresses that the philosopher establishes a profound connection between music and sympathy. In his essay “Of the Nature of that Imitation which takes place in what are called The Imitative Arts,” Smith delves into esthetic theory, dedicating a significant portion of the text to music and its role in eliciting pleasure and emotions. While previous studies have acknowledged the presence of art-related vocabulary and an esthetic dimension in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, they have not comprehensively mobilized his art essay to illuminate his moral theory. Following this unexplored path, this paper rallies the parallel Smith creates between emotions and musical aspects, such as rhythm and melody, to find a connection between his esthetic and moral ideas. In essence, it reveals how the human esthetic sensibility to look for regularities and order serves as a foundational element in Smith’s understanding of sympathy and social harmony.

David Hume and Adam Smith were friends, but their friendship does not imply that the two authors shared the same ideas, or should have shared the same ideas. Money is an example of a subject of disagreement between David Hume and Adam Smith that has either been ignored or interpreted as a puzzle, given their friendship. I suggest that Smith did not replicate or cite Hume’s exposition of the quantity of money in his Wealth of Nations because Smith thought Hume was wrong. For Smith, Hume fell into the mercantilist fallacy of considering the accumulation of money as wealth. Rather than accumulating money through market restrictions, as other mercantilists would, Hume advocated the accumulation of money through commerce and hoarding, but Hume’s goal was still the accumulation of gold and silver. Smith saw through Hume’s mistakes and addressed each of them, thus rejecting Hume’s theory of money, while maintaining their friendship.