In Memory of the Father: Laurence S. Moss

A personal reflection on the life and philosophy of the late Laurence S. Moss (former editor of the AJES) by his son, Joshua Louis Moss. Mixing personal anecdote with a general academic analysis, Moss informally examines his father's intellectual beginnings in the 1960s drawn from the lectures of Ludwig Von Mises, and traces this through his father's development of innovative teaching techniques like the incorporation of stage magic. Moss examines his father's intellectual contrarianism and canonical skepticism as key developmental foundations used to build his father's academic and pedagogical approach. Moss examines his father's interest in expanding economics through a cross‐disciplinary approach utilizing philosophy, history, sociology, and performance studies through his father's innovative examination of points of contact between the principles of stage magic and the principles of economic theory.     

C. E. Ayres's Reliance on T. H. Huxley: Did Darwin's Bulldog Bite?

In David Seckler's Thorstein Veblen and the Institutionalists, the proposition is advanced that “Ayres out-Veblens Veblen and out Deweys Dewey”. This commonly held view of the intellectual orientation of the prominent American institutional economist, Clarence Edwin Ayres, places him as an intellectual descendent of philosopher John Dewey's pragmatism, and economist Thorstein B, Veblen's institutionalist economics. Certainly such an outlook is not incorrect, but it is also not adequate if one is to achieve an understanding of Ayres. A careful check of the indexes of Ayres's major works shows that his references preponderantly go not to Dewey and to Veblen, but to Adam Smith and Charles Darwin, Moreover, it is to the latter that Ayres turned in his effort to overturn the former. However, Ayres in interpreting Darwin relied not upon Dewey and Veblen, but rather upon Thomas Henry Huxley, the British physician turned scientist, who because of his outspoken advocacy of Darwin's evolutionary biology became known as “Darwin's bulldog.”     

In Sickness and in Health: Recent Judicial Developments in Americans with Disabilities Act Association Discrimination Cases

A little-known provision of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) prohibits covered employers from taking an adverse employment action against a qualified employee if a determinative factor in the adverse employment action is the disability of an associate or relative of the employee. A review of the reported court opinions indicates that plaintiff employees often encounter difficulty in these cases. Some plaintiffs are unable to prove that they are “qualified” employees at the time of the adverse employment action, and other plaintiffs find it difficult to prove that a determinative factor in the adverse employment action was the disability of the associate or relative. However, plaintiffs have achieved some success as evidenced in the 2008 U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals holdings in Dewitt v. Proctor Hospital and Trujillo v. PacifiCorp. This paper describes reported U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals opinions about ADA association discrimination, its relationship to the Family and Medical Leave Act and Employee Retirement Income Security Act, and the implications for employers, employees, and lawmakers. It also offers practical guidance to both employees and employers for asserting and managing rights and potential liability in this area.     

An American Owenite: Edward A. Filene and the Parameters of Industrial Reform, 1890-1937

Abstract . Edward A. Filene pioneered in introducing industrial democracy in his Boston department store in 1891. In the store's rapid expansion he lost control in 1928 and the experiment came to an end. Equally unsuccessful were his efforts to strengthen public control over the street railway, gas and subway monopolies in Boston after 1901 and to promote urban reform there from 1909 to 1912. He became a prophet of the New Capitalism and a promoter of the New Deal but in both movements his integrity isolated him from his peers. His enduring contributions were the cooperative and credit union movements.     

Thanks for the memories: baseball veterans' end-of-career salaries

It is well-established that a baseball player's salary is based on his performance, experience, star status, bargaining power, mobility and his team's ability to pay. This paper focuses on veteran players who are on the brink of retirement and on the determinants of their salaries. It is found that a veteran's end-of-career peak salary depends upon how his career performance, that his most recent performance is irrelevant unless he has spent his entire career with one team, and that the average veteran's salary peaks after 9 years in the Majors. A corollary inference is that general managers recognize and reward player performance over the long haul in comparison with others who have played at that player's principal position, and with a nod to how history will evaluate that player. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Henry George: The Economist as Moralist*

Abstract . Henry George derived his economic theory from his personal experience. He had the good fortune to be living in California during his formative years; there the economic events which transpired during the settlement of the North American continent—the passing of the frontier and its consequences—occurred within a time span of a few years and the telescoping of history gave him the framework for an original economic system, as well as a utopian vision of a free society. Much attention has properly been paid to George's economic ideas but he was also a moralist, one accepted by some philosophers as among the greatest. This aspect of his work, and particularly his value theory, have been neglected.     

Henry George and Europe: As Dissident Economist and Path-breaking Philosopher, He was a Catalyst for British Social Reform

Abstract . Henry George's influence was greater in the United Kingdom than in the United States. The 80s and 90s there were particularly favorable for the reception of his revolutionary ideas. Though, thanks to such thinkers as Alfred Russell Wallace and James and John Stuart Mill, a land reform movement already existed, its sudden rise to national significance was due to George. George's writing and speaking skills and his dedication moved many serious citizens into the political Left and heavily influenced men and women who became leaders of British non-Marxian socialism, at the formation and consolidation of their movement. While George's followers broke with both the Wallace and socialist movements, George's rhetorical talents awakened the broad circles of thinking people to a consciousness of the full range of the social question.     

Veblen and the Political Economy of Technocracy: The Herald of Technological Revolution Developed an Ideology of 'Scientific' Collectivism

Abstract . In the early 1900s, engineers the United States began developing their own analysis of the economy. Thorstein Veblen, in The Engineers and the Price System, gave a systematic treatment of that analysis. But Veblen's approach to political economy was broader than that of the engineers. His understanding of social change was based on a two-part research program: First, recognize the institutional elements of social stability; then identify an operative force with technological values that could foster change. When applied to the U.S. of his day, this research program resulted in Veblen's seeing a conflict between pecuniary and industrial values. Veblen believed that the triumph of industrial values was crucial for making society compatible with mass-production technology. These values were held to by both engineers and industrial workers. Veblen's earlier works emphasized workers as being agents for social change; later he shifted his focus to engineers. In both cases he reacted to the social activism of each group.     

Clarence E. Ayres and the Legacy of German Idealism

Abstract . Based on the Clarence E. Ayres (1891-1972) papers at the University of Texas, this study traces the continuity among thinkers such as Kant, Hegel, Veblen, Dewey, and Ayres; the latter was a leading institutional economist following Veblen's death. Publicly acknowledging his intellectual debt to Veblen and Dewey, Ayres drew from these men some idealistic assumptions as well as the historicism that is implicit in his technological determinism or instrumental theory of knowledge. Thorstein Veblen and John Dewey owed a great deal to the philosophical tradition of idealism, regardless of the devotion to naturalism in their systems. The origins of Ayres's technological theory of value are found in Veblen and Dewey writings and back of them the legacy of German idealism. The vital link was a mutual acceptance that freedom was expressed in a cultural and historical form, realized in human activity. It was a process.     

LIBERTY BETWEEN THE LINES IN A STATIST AND MODERNIST AGE: UNFOLDING THE ADAM SMITH IN FRIEDRICH HAYEK

This article interprets F. A. Hayek as having been constrained by the statism and modernism of his times, and as writing in a way that obscured some of his central ideas. I suggest that between the lines we can see a focus on liberty understood hardily as others not messing with one's stuff– even though Hayek in The Constitution of Liberty defined liberty in ways that tended to obscure this hardy definition, and Hayek often used code words like ‘competition,’‘the market,’ and ‘spontaneous’ where ‘liberty’ or ‘freedom’ would have been plainer, albeit more offensive to the culture. Seeing the hardy definition of liberty between the lines in Hayek enables us to see his focus on the liberty principle and his case for a presumption of liberty. Such a reading of Hayek, I suggest, is true to Adam Smith, who expounded a central message that by and large the liberty principle holds, and that it deserves the presumption in our culture and politics.     

Employer Penalties for Failure to Provide Individual Employee Notification Under the Family and Medical Leave Act: “Clarifications” Following Ragsdale v. Wolverine Worldwide, Inc.

This article examines the Supreme Court's ruling in Ragsdale v. Wolverine Worldwide, Inc. (2002) and considers its implications for employer and employee rights and responsibilities relative to implementing the FMLA policies. We provide an overview of the pre-decision regulatory environment including the general leave provisions of the FMLA and DOL's regulations requiring employer notification of leave designated as FMLA leave. We also identify those provisions that the decision did not alter and provide a broader consideration of the issues and implication of this decision for employers and employees.     

Karol Wojtyła’s Katolicka Etyka Społeczna as Precursor and Hermeneutic Key to Pope John Paul II’s Economic Teaching

The highly anticipated publication of Karol Wojtyła’s Katolicka etyka społeczna (KES) in 2018 provides a novel and important basis for understanding the economic thinking of Pope John Paul II. The text is comprised of Wojtyła’s extensive lecture notes from the 1950s on the topic of Catholic social teaching and spans almost 500 pages. KES illustrates the future pope’s deep concern for economic justice as a young priest and his ambivalence towards capitalism, which persisted throughout his papacy. Given the size of KES, this article selectively focuses on Wojtyła’s treatment of topics of continuing relevance: the right of the Church to pronounce on economic matters; private property and the “social mortgage” on it; inequality, the just distribution of resources, and the “option for the poor”; the moral assessment of capitalism and Marxism; the dignity of labor and workers’ rights; and the role of conflict in promoting the common good. I contend that KES is consonant with the later papal teaching of John Paul II on economic justice and that it provides a hermeneutic key to understanding it. Furthermore, I argue that the “radicalism” of Karol Wojtyła on matters of economic justice in KES coheres with papal social teaching from Pope Paul VI through that of Pope Francis.     

On the distribution of Harter

In his seminal paper, Harter (1951) derived the exact distribution of Wald’s classification statistic. In this note, we consider the more general problem of deriving the exact distribution of the product XY when X and Y are independent student’s t random variables with any degrees of freedom. Our results are simpler and more general than those presented by Harter (1951).     

Patterns of intention: Oberkampf and Knoll as Schumpeterian entrepreneurs

ABSTRACT

Presented here is an analysis of Schumpeter’s interest in political economy, as it relates to his use of history to investigate economic change and capitalism. This aspect of Schumpeter’s work – referring to style and involving a range of moral and aesthetic considerations – is largely neglected in entrepreneurship studies despite his influence on the discipline. This paper argues these considerations are essential to understand Schumpeter’s entrepreneur and the role of creative destruction in rejuvenating capitalism. However, his theory also involves political inclinations and choices, such as elitism and a fear of declinism, both of which are more typical to conservative not destructive worldviews. To illustrate my argument I examine and describe two cases, those of Oberkampf and Knoll, the latter a rough contemporary of Schumpeter. The findings point to the central role of political economy in past and present debates about the political role of entrepreneurship in society, suggesting a need for further attention to the zeitgeist (spirit of the time) in future research.     

The evolution of the Swedish market model

Sweden historically pioneered many aspects of a modern market economy, hosting the first known share company, the first European credit notes, and the first central bank. Anders Chydenius's booklet Den nationella vinsten (The National Gain) was printed in 1765, 11 years before Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. Sweden was early in extending to women the rights to pursue professions and own businesses. Today, Sweden and its Nordic neighbours evince an unusual combination of high taxes and some of the freest economies in the world. Another characteristic feature is long-standing trust, which facilitates investment and cooperation. It also allows for decentralised decision-making, a characteristic feature of Nordic business management. Sweden's unusual high-trust culture significantly affects economic activity.     

Unity in the Social Thought of Adolph Lowe: A Review of "Essays in Political Economics: Public Control in a Democratic Society"

Abstract . From the economist Adolph Lowe's voluminous-writings, Allen Oakleyh has selected eight essays which present the gist of Lowe's thought. It unifies his structural analyses and his instrumental analyses into the system Lowe calls “Political Economics.” This pre-orders desired ends or effects and then determines or applies goal-adequate means to achieve these ends. Lowe's Essays in Political Economics sketches the economic paradigm by which he expands the evolutionary way of thinking from the subject —economic behavior— to the object, the socioeconomic world. He argues that instability is fundamental, basic and inherent in contemporary industrial capitalism as it has evolved physically, technologically and socially and stability can be restored by an approach which reverses the continuum to end-means. He holds that if the world evolves, and it does, so must the goal-adequate methods and instrumentalities to deal with it.     

Franz Oppenheimer's (1864–1943) Social Economic Approach to Health

The idea of scholarly synthesis was central to the founders of the American Journal of Economics and Sociology. Franz Oppenheimer (1864–1943) in fact impersonated the idea of scholarly synthesis. Being the son of a Reformist rabbi—these religious roots provided the impulse for his work—he started out as a physician in the industrial suburbs of Berlin; his diagnosis was that he faced social and not medical disease, which consequently brought him to the study of economics. But unlike many mainstream economists today, he insisted on the necessary cooperation between economists and sociologists, ideally in one person. His chair in Frankfurt, showing his own handwriting, was denominated for economic theory and sociology. In this article, I show his contributions with respect to economic aspects of health. These are not well known. Part of the reason is that the field of health economics as it is taught now is very narrow. Therefore, Oppenheimer's health economic contributions tend to be overlooked.     

ARTHUR SELDON: GREAT EDITOR, THINKER AND RADICAL ECONOMIST

Arthur Seldon, the founder editor of Economic Affairs and first Editorial Director of the IEA, died in October 2005, a few weeks before the 25th anniversary issue went to press. Many tributes have been paid to Arthur Seldon in obituaries in The Economist and the major national newspapers. In this special section of Economic Affairs we reproduce four of the speeches given at his memorial service on 15 January 2006. Respectively, they illustrate the fond affection for Arthur Seldon felt by Ralph Harris, the founder General Director of the IEA; Stuart Waterhouse, a fellow LSE student; Martin Anderson, who worked with Arthur Seldon editing Economic Affairs; and Geoffrey Howe, former Chancellor of the Exchequer. Three members of Arthur Seldon's family also spoke at the memorial service. Their talks concentrated on Arthur Seldon's family life, but the following more general thoughts particularly resonated with all present. His adopted son, Michael Perrott, commented that he was ‘a lion amongst thinkers, timeless and uncompromising’. Peter Seldon spoke of his father as ‘a visionary’ and ‘a genius’; he concluded, ‘we are all unique but the word could have been invented for Arthur’. Peter's brother Anthony Seldon commented that ‘he [Arthur] lives on in all of us’. – Philip Booth     

Frank Knight on Preachers and Economic Policy: A 19th Century Liberal Anti Religionist, He Thought Religion Should Support the Status Quo

Abstract . A central feature of the work of American economist and social philosopher Frank H. Knight was his antagonism toward organized religion, particularly Christianity and especially Catholicism. Knight's antagonism towards the Church may be traced to his historical views on the Liberal Revolution and the opposition of the Church to critical inquiry and open discussion, and its support for despotic social institutions. Additionally, Knight's antagonism stemmed from his skepticism about the possibilities of effective social reforms based upon Christian moral principles. Knight found little in Christian teaching that would offer appropriate solutions—certainly not the “Gospel of Love” which he took as the core of Christian social teachings. Furthermore he was critical of the reform efforts of preachers because of their ignorance of the function of the free market and their propensity towards radical solutions. On the centennial of his birth, he is remembered as an ardent social critic and a liberal supporter of the status quo.

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