The complex role of Karl Menger in the Viennese economic theory

This paper is focused on the relation between economics and mathematics in the Wiener Kreis and in the Mathematische Kolloquium. In the 1930s, the economic theory became a part of Otto Neurath’s project of Unified Science, but in Menger’s Kolloquium, the reformulation of the model of general economic equilibrium (GEE) distanced it greatly from the Kreis’s neopositivist point of view. The role of Karl Menger is fundamental to understand the methodological and epistemological cleavage that arose in Mathematische Kolloquium. His role was very important also for understand the relation between the economic theory of the Austrian school and mathematical economics.

When Italian economics “Was Second to None”. Luigi Einaudi and the Turin School of Economics

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the work of a group of economists that was an important expression of a fertile season of Italian economics, in the period from the mid-1890s to the end of 1930s, which developed around the figure of Luigi Einaudi, and earlier, around that of his master Cognetti de Martiis. This School expressed a range of thought of high value in the political and economic sphere. In the economic field, the School established a fertile relation between historical–empirical work and economic theory; in the political field it investigated the relation between freedom and economic order.     

Austrian economics and development: The case of Sudha Shenoy’s analysis

The aim of this paper is to describe Sudha Shenoy’s use of Menger, Mises, and Hayek (she explicitly called them ‘the older Austrians’) to explain development and growth. Her aim was to show that the application of Austrian economics, based on the notions of capital structure and division of labor, embedded in a specific legal framework (common law), historically promoted development and growth (as in early modern England); and can promote development and growth in underdeveloped countries (her specific focus was India). Shenoy also claimed that any policymaking as well as government’s intervention are either useless or dangerous, having two main dysfunctional effects, which are often interrelated; namely, make development slower (or even stop it), and increase corruption.