Search results

1 – 10 of 43
Book part
Publication date: 10 June 2009

Robert Van Horn

What historical background Van Overtveldt offers, he primarily draws from interviews he personally conducted and memoirs of various Chicago economists, especially Milton Friedman…

Abstract

What historical background Van Overtveldt offers, he primarily draws from interviews he personally conducted and memoirs of various Chicago economists, especially Milton Friedman. In the introduction, Van Overtveldt (2007, p. 15) sheds light on his methodology; he states that he based his historical analysis on three layers of sources: “The first layer includes the books, essays, monographs, and articles published in academic journals by Chicago and non-Chicago economists…The second layer consists of material that is available in the archives of the University of Chicago…and in the files of the Communications Department of the University of Chicago. The third layer [draws from]…the more than 100 interviews that were conducted from 1994 to 2003.” Regarding the third, Van Overtveldt has provided a valuable historical contribution by compiling such an extensive oral history. Of the three layers Van Overtveldt mentions, the second is relatively thin. In the endnotes, Van Overtveldt only cites, excluding newspaper citations, seven archival sources from either the Special Collections at the University of Chicago or the files in Chicago's Communications Department. Tellingly, in the endnotes, the ratio of interview citations to archival citations is roughly 120:7≅17:1.1 While adducing interviews per se is not problematic, information in an interview (or a memoir) needs to be checked against archival sources. Historian of economic thought, Bruce Caldwell (2007, pp. 348–349), cautions “[One should] take reminiscences with a grain of salt, and whenever possible to consult multiple archival sources.”2 If a reflection cannot be checked against archival sources, it should be used with guarded skepticism. Van Overtveldt, however, unquestioningly relies on interviews; in fact, a retrospective point made by Friedman sometimes trumps assertions, explicit and implicit, critical of Chicago economics and its history. Van Overtveldt (2007, p. 27) plays the Friedman trump card, for example, in the following context:[Crauford] Goodwin noted that by the end of the 1940s, prominent members of the business community backed economists who preached the advantages of free competition and capitalism and ‘were all associated with the University of Chicago.’ Friedman strongly denies the relevance of this Cold War argument and the implied patronage of economics – especially at the University of Chicago – by business interests in favor of capitalism and the free-market economy.

Details

A Research Annual
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84855-656-0

Book part
Publication date: 9 May 2023

Jason Whalley and Peter Curwen

COVID-19 accelerated change within the UK retail market. It encouraged the growth of online shopping, providing the necessary demand for grocers to invest in their operations, and…

Abstract

COVID-19 accelerated change within the UK retail market. It encouraged the growth of online shopping, providing the necessary demand for grocers to invest in their operations, and transformed the economics of their businesses. As innovative new business models emerged, some existing retailers collapsed leading to significant changes on the high street. Landlords were also affected. As some retail tenants struggled to pay their rents, other parts of the sector prospered and sought additional warehouse capacity to cope with rising demand. Not only does this illustrate how different parts of the retail sector faired during COVID-19, but it also demonstrates how the move online has resulted in the emergence of new opportunities.

Details

Beyond the Pandemic? Exploring the Impact of COVID-19 on Telecommunications and the Internet
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80262-050-4

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 23 July 2016

Peter J. Boettke, Christopher J. Coyne and Patrick Newman

This chapter provides a comprehensive survey of the contributions of the Austrian school of economics, with specific emphasis on post-WWII developments. We provide a brief history…

Abstract

This chapter provides a comprehensive survey of the contributions of the Austrian school of economics, with specific emphasis on post-WWII developments. We provide a brief history and overview of the original theorists of the Austrian school in order to set the stage for the subsequent development of their ideas by Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek. In discussing the main ideas of Mises and Hayek, we focus on how their work provided the foundations for the modern Austrian school, which included Ludwig Lachmann, Murray Rothbard and Israel Kirzner. These scholars contributed to the Austrian revival in the 1960s and 1970s, which, in turn, set the stage for the emergence of the contemporary Austrian school in the 1980s. We review the contemporary development of the Austrian school and, in doing so, discuss the tensions, alternative paths, and the promising future of Austrian economics.

Details

Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78560-960-2

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 19 August 2019

Peter J. Boettke

Nancy Maclean’s Democracy in Chains (2017) is an attempt to provide a narrative arc for the rise of free market ideas in political action during the second half of the twentieth…

Abstract

Nancy Maclean’s Democracy in Chains (2017) is an attempt to provide a narrative arc for the rise of free market ideas in political action during the second half of the twentieth century and into the first decades of the twenty-first century. The central character in her narrative is neither F.A. Hayek nor Milton Friedman, let alone Adam Smith or Ludwig von Mises, but James M. Buchanan, the 1986 Nobel Prize winner in economics. MacLean argues that rather than extol the virtues of the market economy as Hayek and Friedman did before him, Buchanan focused on the dysfunctions of politics. Due to a series of argumentative fallacies and failures that follow from her ideological blinders, I argue that MacLean’s attempt is a missed opportunity to seriously engage some very pressing issues in public choice and political economy and understand how James Buchanan attempted to resolve them in a democratic manner. As such, Democracy in Chains is not only a mischaracterization of Buchanan and his project but also a poignant lesson to us all about how ideological blinders can subvert even the sincerest effort to unearth truth in the social sciences and the humanities.

Details

Including a Symposium on Ludwig Lachmann
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78769-862-8

Keywords

Abstract

Indicates books which are especially recommended.

Details

Further University of Wisconsin Materials: Further Documents of F. Taylor Ostrander
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-76231-166-8

Content available
Book part
Publication date: 20 August 1996

Abstract

Details

The Peace Dividend
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-44482-482-0

Content available
Book part
Publication date: 28 September 2018

Helen Jefferson Lenskyj

Abstract

Details

Gender, Athletes’ Rights, and the Court of Arbitration for Sport
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78743-753-1

Book part
Publication date: 16 September 2022

Luca Gambetti, Christoph Görtz, Dimitris Korobilis, John D. Tsoukalas and Francesco Zanetti

A vector autoregression model estimated on US data before and after 1980 documents systematic differences in the response of short- and long-term interest rates, corporate bond

Abstract

A vector autoregression model estimated on US data before and after 1980 documents systematic differences in the response of short- and long-term interest rates, corporate bond spreads and durable spending to news total factor productivity shocks. Interest rates across the maturity spectrum broadly increase in the pre-1980s and broadly decline in the post-1980s. Corporate bond spreads decline significantly, and durable spending rises significantly in the post-1980 period while the opposite short-run response is observed in the pre-1980 period. Measuring expectations of future monetary policy rates conditional on a news shock suggests that the Federal Reserve has adopted a restrictive stance before the 1980s with the goal of retaining control over inflation while adopting a neutral/accommodative stance in the post-1980 period.

Content available
Book part
Publication date: 1 September 2022

C. C. Wolhuter

This opening chapter sets a frame for the chapters of this volume, dealing with how the dynamic dialectic interplay between forceful global societal forces and context shape

Abstract

This opening chapter sets a frame for the chapters of this volume, dealing with how the dynamic dialectic interplay between forceful global societal forces and context shape humanity’s education response in various parts of the world. “Context” as a perennial threshold concept in Comparative and International Education is explicated. It will then be explained how, during its long historical evolution, scholars in the field each time had to contend new contexts, or reconceived the notion of “context” in a new way. Subsequently the problems of an overly fixation on the historical and the present, to the detriment of the future, and inertia are extant in the field, will be explained. The unprecedented, seismic changes currently impacting on the societal context worldwide, will then be enumerated. These changes can be subsumed under the collective name of globalization. The concept globalization is then clarified, and the take of the scholarly community on the impact of globalization on education is then mapped and interrogated. The authors’ stance on this is stated, namely that a dynamic interplay between global focus and contextual realities shape education in various parts of the world. It is in this theoretical frame that the remainder of the chapters of the volume is presented, combing out the main features of education development in each part of the world, as a dialectic between global forces and contextual imperatives.

Details

World Education Patterns in the Global North: The Ebb of Global Forces and the Flow of Contextual Imperatives
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80262-518-9

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 8 November 2019

Peter Raisbeck

Abstract

Details

Architecture as a Global System: Scavengers, Tribes, Warlords and Megafirms
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83867-655-1

1 – 10 of 43