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I have been asked to explore how James Buchanan’s work on public finance and constitutional political economy might have emerged out of themes present in Frank Knight’s oeuvre, especially his Risk Uncertainty, and Profit. Buchanan’s body of work has inspired the development of a style of political economy sometimes described as Virginia or Constitutional Political Economy to distinguish it from the Chicago Political Economy with which George Stigler is associated, and with Stigler and Buchanan both being students of Knight. While Buchanan, unlike Stigler, did not write his dissertation under Knight’s supervision, this is a minor distinction because Buchanan regarded Knight as his de facto supervisor even though Roy Blough was his de jure supervisor. The author explains how Knight’s scholarly oeuvre can in large measure be detected in Buchanan’s effort to fashion an alternative approach to public finance and to articulate the field of study now called constitutional political economy.

What do economists talk about? This seemingly innocent interrogation conceals a broader and innovative research programme, with the potential to renew the reflection on heterodox economics in a post‐crisis scenario. The aim of this paper is to show that convergence between language for specific purposes and economics is possible, so as to single out the genesis and the emergence of critical economic discourse.

After underlining the necessary collaboration between language and subject‐matter specialists, the paper addresses the question of the problematic use of economics textbooks in English‐speaking countries. Then, it deals with the fascinating question of the multiplicity of specialized meanings in economics. After pointing out the shortcomings of orthodoxy characterized by hyper‐formalization and its inevitable corollary, the mathematical nature of the discipline, it investigates the genesis of critical economic discourse, which requires the acknowledgement of pluralism and the components of heterodoxy, in order to converge towards a process of disciplinary acculturation that goes hand in hand with the learning process of language for specific purposes.

A deep‐seated renewal of economics, consisting of a methodological shift towards the components of heterodoxy, has the potential to enhance the effectiveness of teaching English for economics, so that the latter effectively conveys specialized meaning.

Teaching and researching English for specific purposes necessitates enhanced collaboration between subject‐matter specialists and applied linguists. However, this type of collaboration can be hampered by institutional or socio‐professional obstacles.

Discursive analysis has become indispensable in order to surmount the collective failure of mainstream economics in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. With the help of textbooks of a new kind, one must go beyond the vision of students as mere consumers of knowledge.

Language for specific purposes has long shown interest in economics, but is the reciprocal true? This paper proposes an original association, by putting the two disciplinary fields on an equal footing, and by bringing new synergies forward.

Aims to examine the issue of industrial strategy (IS), paying particular attention to the case of Britain. Sets out to assess the possibility and nature of an industrial strategy for Britain, in Europe, and within the global scene, taking into account the world we live in as we see it. Accordingly, the perspective is driven and shaped by a quest for a realistic, feasible and sustainable industrial strategy. In order to achieve these objectives, first examines the theoretical arguments behind much of British, and more generally, Western industrial policies. Following this, outlines and assesses British industrial policy post‐Second World War then compares and contrasts British industrial policy with that of Europe, the USA, Japan and the newly industrialized countries. Then examines recent developments in economics and management which may explain the “Far Eastern” miracle, and points to the possibility of a successful, narrowly self‐interested, IS for Europe and Britain, based on the lessons from (new) theory and international experience. To assess what is possible, develops a theoretical framework linking firms in their roles as consumers and/or electors. This hints at the possibilities and limits of feasible policies. All these ignore desirability which, in the author′s view, should be seen in terms of distributional considerations, themselves contributors to sustainability. Accordingly, discusses a desirable industrial strategy for Britain in Europe which accounts for distributional considerations, and goes on to examine its implications for the issue of North‐South convergence. Concludes by pointing to the limitations of the analysis and to directions for developments.

This chapter explores the origins of the theme of competitive advantage in 19th and early 20th century economics. This theme, which forms the core of modern Strategic Management, was a battleground for debates about the value of abstract theory versus observations about real-life events. Intellectual genealogies, citations, and other sources show the central roles played by the University of Vienna and Harvard University. These two institutions strongly influenced the theory of monopolistic competition as well as all three modern views of competitive advantage – the industrial as expressed by Porter, the resource-based as expressed by Penrose, and the evolutionary as expressed by Schumpeter.

This research addresses the question of whether market competition influences a firm's implicit tax burden. Implicit taxes are defined as the pretax rate of return disadvantage earned on an investment that is taxed preferentially. The Scholes and Wolfson (1992) model predicts that implicit taxes will fully offset any benefit from preferential tax treatment leading to no benefit from lower explicit taxes; however, their theory assumes perfect market competition. This chapter relaxes the assumption of perfect market competition and finds that firms in industries with lower competition bear lower implicit taxes and firms in industries with higher competition bear higher implicit taxes. These findings are consistent with monopoly and oligopoly behavior predictions where firms in less competitive industries have greater price setting power and can retain more of their tax savings while market forces in competitive industries force companies to pass along any savings to customers (Mason, 1939). Furthermore, these findings answer the call in the literature for more research on determinants of cross-sectional variation in implicit taxes (Shackelford & Shevlin, 2001).

In 1933 two books on competitive structure were published. One, extracted from a Harvard PhD filed six years earlier, dealt with the workings of the competitive process. Seeking not to supplant, but to supplement Marshall, this book by E. H. Chamberlin focused on an effort involving the use of a diagrammatic apparatus to highlight certain fundamental relationships between variables in the competitive process. It did not analyse real firms but nor did it attempt to pretend that such were irrelevant, and to concentrate on positions of competitive equilibrium only. It dealt with problems of arrival at equilibrium, false trading, and a whole variety of issues relevant to an actual competitive process. Supervised by Allyn Young, it drew on a wide range of references and showed evidence of the kind of thorough scholarly preparation which has always been characteristic of the best American PhDs.

The first Principia Mathematica (1686) by Sir Isaac Newton with reference to natural philosophy and his system of the world has largely contributed to the first revolution in scientific thinking in modern times. It has created the conceptual basis of modern science in the classical tradition by providing the tools of analysis and the technique of reasoning in terms of stability—from—within or, as we would say today, the model of stable equilibrium conditions.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a personal retrospective on six of the key events/experiences that influenced the development of the structure, foundational premises, and models of the resource‐advantage theory of competition.

The paper uses a personal retrospective approach.

The paper finds that six key events influenced the development of resource‐advantage theory: B.J. “Bud” LaLonde emphasizes the works of Alderson; Rob Morgan suggests an article on the resource‐based theory of the firm; Roy Howell suggests a presentation on R‐A theory; Randy Sparks shows a “socialist calculation” article; Kim Boal suggests the Journal of Management Inquiry as a publication outlet; and Bob Phillips discusses his work on “firm effects vs industry effects”. The paper then relates each of the six events to the paths, routes, or procedures that are often proposed as (or reported to be) likely to lead to the development of theories.

By providing the evolutionary history of resource‐advantage theory, the paper provides implications for developing marketing theories.

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.