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Describes how mathematics enjoyed a virtual monopoly as the privileged method of economic inquiry in the post‐war period. Counters the argument that such a position generates negative consequences, such as monopoly rents and the abuse of dominant positions. Argues that competing schools of economic thought such as Chicago, Harvard, neoclassical and post‐Keynesian, neo‐Australian, evolutionary and institutional economists all hold positions that diverge on essentials. Suggests that the market structure of post‐war economies is not a monopoly but a heterogeneous asymmetric oligopoly with a few large and a fringe of small suppliers. Analyses the relationship between two large and two fringe suppliers, stating that the oligopoly metaphor suggests that there is competition between schools that may lead to winners and losers and to changes in the market shares. In conclusion, offers a projection of what the author expects, i.e. who will lose and how the market structure will change, offering an insight into the role of mathematics.

States that the homo economicus abstraction remains dominant in economics, despite a range of criticisms of its use over the years. Many institutionalists, post‐Keynesians, neo‐Austrians and social economists have insisted that economic analysis must be conducted in an explicit historical context, where the difficulties which economic decision‐makers face, because of time irreversibility, structural change and fundamental uncertainty, are taken into account, as well as non‐economic influences on economic behaviour. Understandably, there has been a reluctance to construct a competing abstraction with formal properties which are comparable to those of the homo economicus construct. It is argued in this paper that the development of an alternative behavioural abstraction constitutes an important goal, both in terms of clarifying the limitations of homo economicus and providing an analytical basis upon which investigations of economic behaviour in historical time can be built.

This paper comments on Theodore Koutsobinas's recent contribution to the debate on the formation of expectations in situations of strong uncertainty.

The set of comments focuses not on doctrinal‐historical issues, but on Koutsobinas's theoretical framework, which is, in turn, a modified version of the analytical scheme of the state of expectations presented in the present author's 1999 article in the Journal of Post Keynesian Economics.

The paper demonstrates that the original framework developed in the 1999 “Expectations and confidence” article is general enough to accommodate Koutsobinas's concern with conventional expectations. It also shows that some ways of using that framework to discuss conventions have already been explored in subsequent work. The interesting points made by Professor Koutsobinas can thus be investigated with the original framework, without the changes he suggests.

The paper clarifies some elements of the theory of expectations and confidence formation and its use to study conventional and unconventional behaviour.

Our study aims to evaluate the impact of infrastructure and public investment on private investment in machinery and equipment in Brazil from 1947 to 2017. The contribution of our article to the existing literature lies in providing a more comprehensive understanding of the presence or absence of the crowding effect in the Brazilian economy by leveraging an extensive historical database. Our central argument posits that the recent decline in private capital accumulation over the last few decades can be attributed to shifts in economic policies – moving from a developmentalist orientation to nondevelopmental guidance since the early 1990s, which is reflected in the diminished levels of public investment and infrastructure since the 1980s.

We conducted a series of econometric regressions utilizing the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model as our chosen econometric methodology.

Employing two different variables to measure public investment and infrastructure, our results – robust across various specifications – have substantiated the existence of a crowding-in effect in Brazil over the examined period. Thus, we have empirical evidence indicating that the state has influenced private capital accumulation in the Brazilian economy over the past decades.

Our article contributes to the existing literature by offering a more comprehensive understanding of the crowding effect in the Brazilian economy, utilizing an extensive historical database.