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The objective of this paper is to show the modernity of the approach developed by Carl Menger. The author argues that the Mengerian approach is part of a conceptual pattern composed of four interdependent, hierarchical and coherent parts (ontology, epistemology, methodology and key concepts) and that this conceptual pattern in all its originality and consistency fits perfectly within the approach of complexity. Ontologically (Section 1), the starting point is different from that of Léon Walras and William Stanley Jevons, the economy being apprehended as an open system; from an epistemological point of view (Section 2), Menger adopts a distinct conception of what constitutes a good scientific explanation, which contrasts with the Walrasian conception; methodologically (Section 3), his rejection of mathematics can therefore be understood as a consequence of his ontological and epistemological position: it is not mathematics as such that the author rejects but the functionalist tools then available, which are not adapted to his conception of economic reality; and finally the key concept (Section 4) of the author’s analysis is not that of equilibrium but an analysis of the process of exchange and production, with the emphasis placed on the emergence of organic phenomena.

Emil Sax was an Austrian economist both in origin and theoretical background. He is often cited as one of the founders of modern theoretical public economics. An extensive account of his main ideas is given, along with some of the problems left unresolved in his theory.

Purpose – To recognize the comments made by Horwitz (2010) and Koppl (2010) in their attempts to reply to D'Amico and Boettke (forthcoming), “Making Sense out of The Sensory Order.” Furthermore, this paper hopes to explain what role D'Amico and Boettke do see for cognitive neuroscience in the study of Austrian economics.

Methodology/approach – Some brief summary comments are presented about Horwitz (2010) and Koppl (2010). Then a general framework of individual learning and its effects upon social institutions and economic processes is described by referring to Cowan and Rizzo (1996) and Denzau and North (1994).

Findings – Hayek was a political economist first and foremost. Whatever the status of his research in theoretical psychology attains, it does not change the fact that we as economists would do well (especially young economists) to focus on his substantive contributions to economics and political economy.

Research limitations/implications – Though space and time constraints did not afford this at present, further research would benefit from an intensive survey of the empirical findings available in the neuroscience and neuroeconomics literatures. How do such findings map onto the proposed frameworks of Hayekian economics provided by Koppl compared to D'Amico and Boettke.

Originality/value of paper – This paper takes notice of the historical linkage between Cowan and Rizzo's (1996) cognitive model of individual learning within the broader tradition of subjectivist/Hayekian/Austrian economics.

Some will perhaps continue to dispute tourismology as a science but there is no doubt that it will find its full assertion in the near future.

The purpose of this paper is to study a new approach by combining a multilayer perceptron neural network (MLPNN) algorithm with a GM(1, N) model in order to estimate the development cost of a new type of aircraft.

First, data about developing costs and their influencing factors were collected for several types of Boeing and Airbus aircraft. Second, a GM(1, N) model was constructed to simulate development costs for a civil aircraft. Then, an MLPNN algorithm was added to optimize and revise the simulative and forecasting values. Finally, a combined approach, using both a GM(1, N) model and an MLPNN algorithm was adopted to forecast development costs for new civil aircraft.

The results show that the proposed approach could do the work of cost estimation for new types of aircraft. Rather than using a single model, the combined approach could improve simulative and forecasting accuracy.

Scientific cost estimation could improve management efficiency and promote the success of a new type of civil aircraft development. Considering that China’s civil aircraft research and development is at its very beginning stages, only very limited data could be collected. The development costs for civil aircraft are affected by a series of factors. The approach outlined by this paper could be applied to development cost estimations in China’s civil aircraft industry.

The paper has succeeded by constructing a cost estimation index system and proposing a novel combined cost estimation approach comprised of a GM(1, N) model and an MLPNN. It has undoubtedly contributed to improving the accuracy of cost estimations.

Ludwig Lachmann’s Capital and Its Structure ([1956] 1978) is a classic in the literature in Austrian economics. It is mainly discussed in relation to the Austrian contributions to the macroeconomics debates of that time – from Hayek’s dispute with Keynes to the capital controversies of Cambridge UK and Cambridge US. Among Lachmann’s many ideas developed in that work, critical is his idea that the capital structure of an economy consists of heterogeneous capital goods that have multiple specific uses. This fact of the world makes the intertemporal coordination of economic plans a complex phenomenon and not a simple phenomenon. In the standard macroeconomic account, the coordination failure results from a distortion to the interest rate which miscommunicates to economic actors the underlying savings and consumption pattern in the economy at that time. This results in a boom/bust cycle, as the malinvestments in production projects are revealed in time and must go through a costly correction. But this discussion is simply an illustration of a much broader set of problems of relative prices as guides to productive activity in an economy and the problem of economic calculation. Our chapter explores the capital theoretic side of the socialist calculation debate and highlights the importance that an understanding of the capital-using economy consisting of production plans made up of heterogeneous goods with multiple specific uses is to the argument about the calculation problem being the lynchpin argument against the feasibility of socialist economic planning.

Making links between micro and macro levels has been problematic in the social sciences, and the literature in strategic management and organization theory is no exception. The purpose of this chapter is to raise theoretical issues in developing micro-foundations for strategic management and organizational analysis. We discuss more general problems with collectivism in the social sciences by focusing on specific problems in extant organizational analysis. We introduce micro-foundations to literature by explicating the underlying theoretical foundations of the origins of individual action and interaction. We highlight opportunities for future research, specifically emphasizing the need for a rational choice programme in management research.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest a definition of genetic information by taking into account the debate surrounding it. Particularly, the objections raised by Developmental Systems Theory (Griffiths, 2001; Oyama 1985; Griffiths and Knight 1998) to Teleosemantic endorsements of the notion of genetic information (Sterelny et al. 1996; Maynard Smith, 2000; Jablonka, 2002) as well as deflationist approaches which suggest to ascribe the notion of genetic information a heuristic value at most, and to reduce it to that of causality (Godfrey-Smith, 2000; Boniolo, 2003, 2008).

The paper presents the notion of genetic information through its historical evolution and analyses it with the conceptual tools offered by philosophical theories of causation on one side (“causation as influence,” Woodward, 2010; Waters, 2007; Lewis, 2000) and linguistics on the other (“double articulation” Martinet, 1960).

The concept of genetic information is defined as a special kind of cause which causes something to be one way rather than another, by combining elementary units one way rather than another. Tested against the notion of “genetic error” this definition demonstrates to provide an exhaustive account of the common denominators associated with the notion of genetic information: causal specificity; combinatorial mechanism; arbitrariness.

The definition clarifies how the notion of information is understood when applied to genetic phenomena and also contributes to the debate on the notion of information, broadly meant, which is still affected by lack of consensus (Floridi, 2013).