A Major Discovery of Malthus Manuscripts

A substantial collection of Malthus manuscripts has recently been discovered at Ryde (Isle of Wight), in the home of Robert Malthus (1881–1972), the great-grandson of Malthus' brother. Discoveries of other Malthus documents, notably his travel diaries, had been made at Ryde in the early 1960s in response to the enquiries of G.F. McCleary and Patricia James, but this new material was apparently overlooked by Robert Malthus at that time.

The Societies of Political Economy in Italy and the Professionalization of Economists (1860–1900) ()

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.

Adam Smith and Albert Einstein: The Aesthetic Principle of Truth

I argue for an aesthetic criterion of truth through the explication of the epistemologies of Adam Smith and Albert Einstein–the progenitors of modern economics and physics [cf. Skinner, 1979:ch. 2; Holton, 1968, 1979]. The aesthetic criterion supersedes objectivist and relativist epistemologies.

On Composition of Demand and Income Distribution In Classical Economics

In several reviews of my Classical Economics (1987; henceforth CE) a criticism recurs relating to my proposition that distribution in Ricardian economics is dependent upon the pattern of final demand. Anthony Brewer, who is convinced by the demonstration in the book of ‘a fundamentally important core of general equilibrium economics accounting for resource allocation in terms of the rationing function of relative prices,’ has stated the objection fairly and his formulation invites and deserves a response:[Hollander] does overstate his case at times. For example, he claims that, in Ricardo's theory, changes in the pattern of demand should react on the demand for labour, and thus on wages, while admitting that ‘Ricardo himself never formally made’ this extension [CE, p. 104]. He later uses exactly this interaction of demand and wages to support his interpretation of Ricardo against Dobb [CE, p. 360]. Surely, the fact that Ricardo did not ‘formally make’ this point (i.e., did not make it at all) is an argument against Hollander's reading, not for it (1988, p. 555).