Economic Thought paper review forum

Papers submitted to the journal Economic Thought that meet minimum standards of professional quality are posted on the journal’s Discussion Forum in order to solicit comments and discussions.  The Forum’s home page says:

You are invited to comment on these papers.

Comments can range from short remarks to full reviews. We encourage you to be frank, but polite. As a rule, commentators should give their name. If they fear hurting their relationship with authors, they can use an alias, which has to be clearly recognizable as such. Editors will vet comments before publication to make sure appropriate and comprehensible language is used and that they are substantive comments relating to the content of the paper at hand. Standards of fairness will be particularly high if an alias is used.

Preciously there was a navigation problem (now corrected) from the WEA homepage that may have prevented you from taking part.  Below is a linked list of some papers recently posted for open review that you might wish to consider.  

Is Walras’s Theory so Different from Marshall’s?

Ezra Davar

This paper shows that Marshall’s theory is generally equivalent to Walras’s one. It shows that Walras used two types of demand functions: (1) the original (ordinary) demand curve (function); and (2) the derived (general) demand function. Marshall also used both types of demand curves (function); however he did so in a very simplified and vague […]

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Self-interest, Sympathy and the Invisible Hand: From Adam Smith to Market Liberalism

Avner Offer

Adam Smith rejected Mandeville’s invisible-hand doctrine of ‘private vices, publick benefits’. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments his model of the ‘impartial spectator’ is driven by not by sympathy for other people, but by their approbation. Approbation needs to be authenticated, and in Smith’s model authentication relies on innate virtue, which is unrealistic. An alternative […]

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No ethical issues in economics?

Stuart Birks

For much economics research, ethics committee approval is not required. This is seen by some as indicating that there are no ethical issues in economics research. However, ethical research requires more than simply meeting regulatory requirements. If economics research has an impact on perceptions and resulting decisions, then there may be concerns about the nature […]

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Codes of Ethics for Economists: A Pluralist View

Sheila Dow

Within the discussion of ethics and economics some have considered designing a code of ethics for economists. But the idea of such a code is potentially problematic from a pluralist standpoint. Some possibilities are discussed here to show that any code concerning the behaviour of economists presumes a view of human nature and thus of […]

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Professional Economic Ethics: Why Heterodox Economists Should Care

George DeMartino

This paper is the written version of a verbal presentation to the 2011 conference of the Association for Heterodox Economics, held at Nottingham Trent University, 6‐9 July 2011. It presents the case for the ethical scrutiny of the economics profession, and some of the issues surrounding this issue, following the publication of ‘The Economist’s Oath’ […]

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Ontological commitments of Ethics & Economics

Karey Harrison

This paper examines the ‘concrete analogies’ underpinning the ontological commitments of dominant conceptions of ethics, politics and economics to show that the content of economics is implicated in conceptions of ethics, and that these conceptions cannot be separated from questions of research and professional ethics.

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A Decent Capitalism for a Good Society

Kellermann, Dullien & Herr

A Good Society needs to be built on an economic system that differs significantly from the current finance capitalist models around the world. In light of the claim of personal freedom, emancipation and choice within and through a Good Society, a market system is the most functional, dynamic and feasible alternative on the table. However, […]

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And the Real Butchers, Brewers and Bakers? Towards the Integration of Ethics and Economics

Riccardo Baldissone

The difficult dialogue between human rights and business shows that neither the adoption of codes of conduct nor the enforcement of legal norms would overcome the supposed incompatibility of ethics and economics. Such a general supposition is the effect of a narrow understanding of economic activities, which in turn is the result of both neoliberal […]

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Expectations-based Processes – An Interventionist Account of Economic Practice

Leonardo Abel Ivarola, Gustavo Leonardo Marques, Diego Mauricio Weisman

The paper starts distinguishing between two kinds of economic practice: theoretical practice (TP) (model and theory building) and direct economic practice (DEP) (the practical operation upon real economies). Most of the epistemological and philosophical considerations have been directed to the first type of practice, one of whose main goals is the discovery of particular sorts […]

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