ESHET Conference 2025

This paper explores how specialized encyclopedias shape and reflect the structure of economic knowledge. While journal articles and textbooks have traditionally been the main sources for studying the evolution of economics as a discipline, encyclopedias offer a distinct and underexplored vantage point. As curated and authoritative reference works, they provide insight into which ideas are considered established, marginal, or emerging within the discipline at specific points in time. Using The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics as a case study, we apply a combination of semantic text embedding (via SentenceBERT) and citation analysis to map thematic clusters across its entries. We propose a multilayered method that combines textual similarity with bibliographic coupling, using Similarity Network Fusion to integrate these dimensions into a single cognitive map. This approach allows us to visualize the encyclopedia’s internal organization and assess its epistemic structure. We examine how this structure has changed between the 1987 and 2008 editions, offering a diachronic perspective on shifts in thematic emphasis and epistemic project. By treating the New Palgrave as a representation of disciplinary knowledge, this study contributes new tools and perspectives to the history of economics and how it’s changing.

Nordhaus ́ economic analysis of climate change employs general equilibrium and optimal growth theory to assess the allocation potential of markets under emission control policies. In this framework, institutions are represented by perfectly competitive markets internalizing the uncertainty of climate change outcomes as insurable risks. The complement to optimally economize climate change requires governmental control operating under even greater foresight to introduce optimal control policies over time. The paper first reveals, how the two approaches are conceptually interlinked throughout the publications of William Nordhaus. It traces the transition from an analysis of market allocation under general equilibrium assumptions to a normative framework addressing intertemporal societal choices regarding discounted climate damages as part of a cost- benefit analysis. Second, the paper highlights how this significant abstraction from real-world conditions was acknowledged by Nordhaus during the early development of the field, even though critical reflection on foundational assumptions receives diminishing attention in his later publications. In conclusion, the paper raises the question of whether heterodox perspectives offer a complementary potential for more realistic economic analysis of climate change.

This paper revisits the Mankiw, Romer, and Weil (1992) specification of the Solow growth model by using the instrumental variables method, where (i) the future-time reference of languages is considered as an instrument for physical capital, and (ii) the Protestant missionary activities in 1923, along with the national primary school enrolment in 1900, are the instruments for human capital accumulation. We find that the original results of Mankiw, Romer, and Weil (1992) are robust for the estimation method and survive the endogeneity criticisms by Acemoglu (2009) even when alternate datasets of human capital measures are considered.

The process of determining the price of production in the III Volume of Capital raises multiple critiques for the needed assumptions both from a formal point of view and an empirical perspective. In the paper I have seek to understand the severeness of the claimed incoherences. Considering the NI and its developments, the paper has sought to show the possibility to overcome the formal incoherences in the process of determination highlighted by Neoricardian scholars; on the other hand, some of the assumptions required by this process are highly debated: I am referring to the hypothesis of a uniform (or at least standardising) rate of profit. This assumptions have not been seriously questioned by the major approaches, except for Farjoun and Machover’s model. Plausibly, it is due to the fact that the abandonment of the assumption of a uniform rate of profit - which is shared even with mainstream economics – logically implicates the abandonment of the price of productions as reliable tool in understanding the price movement. As Farjoun and Machover have highlighted, however, an overcoming of the uniform rate of profit does not involve a contradiction in the LTV both from an exegetical perspective - the concept of a uniform rate of profit and rate of surplus value is introduced in the III Volume of Capital, well beyond the fundamental structuration of the LTV presented in the First volume – and from a logical one: we can consider a direct relation between real (or market) prices and values, obviously taking into consideration the effects of scarcity in the exchange sphere. The concept map we outlined of the different approaches, from the Neoricardians to advocates of the SSI, has showed that today there are not approaches which claim to eliminate the price of production because of its unnecessary role in the LTV; in any case, the SSI of Fred Moseley represents a concrete overcoming of several of the problems for the NI. Anyway, I highlighted in this paper how not even the Moseley’s SSI is sufficient until it does not abandon the weak construction of the price of production, which does not subsume in itself the biases due to the exchange sphere, in favour of the more realistic average industrial prices (AIP). In the last part of the paper, I have elaborated a formal model which explains how to theoretically calculate the average industrial price and the relation between the value produced – and the surplus value extracted – by the different industries and the surplus value realized in the exchange sphere. In conclusion, the present paper suggests that this line of analysis which looks to an abandonment of the price of production in favour of the elaboration of a direct relationship between the totalities of value and actual industrial prices should be regarded as a viable alternative, considering the staggering empirical analyses about the contemporary mode of production it can encourage, thanks to its reduced complexity while maintaining a strong relationship with a Marxian understanding of the law of value.

Spontaneous order has been one of the concepts that revolutionized the economic science since its elaboration by Friedrich Hayek (1937, 1945, 2021[1973]). The aim of this paper is to examine the Hayekian idea from the methodological perspective as well as from the historical one, and to establish the links with its employment in the current debate. Historically, the introduction of spontaneous order (and later on, catallaxy) represented a turning point not only in Hayek’s thought but – more generally – in economics. This methodological switch from the notion of equilibrium to the one of spontaneous order leads to a broader philosophical reflection. Indeed, I argue that the need of formulating the notion of spontaneous order relied on the assumption that economics should not focus on specific technicalities but rather on its aim (telos) and its role in people’s life. Particular emphasis is put on the idea that coordination among people’s behaviors is possible thanks to the market dynamics, which is not only dominated by the logic of the price system but also of the social norms that spread among individuals. The legacy of Hayek's elaboration of spontaneous order, that is, the use of the term by contemporary scholars (e.g. Robert Sugden, Mario Rizzo, and so forth), is examined in order to provide insight into its actual and current methodological use.

This empirical study employs computational linguistics, Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to examine the linguistic features and the main topics of three economics journals with different aims, scopes and readerships, compared to a mathematics and a sociology journal. The goal is to discern linguistic, methodological, and topical divergences with a focus on how these differences reflect the variety of theoretical approaches in economic research. The findings suggest significant discrepancies along these three dimensions, underscoring the potential of combining different textual analysis tools for meta-research purposes. The main result confirms the existence of mainstream pluralism and challenges the claim that certain non-mainstream approaches are ’not economics’.

There seems to be a tension in the delimitation of the role of public policy in F. A. Hayek’s theory. On the one hand, commentators have highlighted the importance of emergent institutions for individual cognition (Dekker and Remic 2024) and Hayek’s insights on learning and adaptation (Dold and Rizzo 2024). Consequently, there would be no need for policy interventions concerning the bounded rationality of individuals (Rizzo and Dold, forthcoming). On the other hand, commentators have advanced the compatibility of institutional design and spontaneous phenomena (Servant 2018). While institutions may be designed to sustain the possibility of experimentation (“free to experiment”, p. 16), the concrete restraints of public policy remain unclear. Arguably, the way in which freedom may limit the role of public institutions is ambiguous and contextual (Kolev 2024). This paper pretends to offer a response by analyzing Hayek’s remarks on responsibility, experience, and learning. Hayek stated that “[l]iberty and responsibility are inseparable” ([1960] 2011, p. 133), where responsibility “presupposes that a person is capable of learning from experience and of guiding his actions by knowledge thus acquired; it is invalid for those who have not yet learned enough or are incapable of learning” (p. 139). Thus, I argue that asserting the conditions under which learning is possible is key to understanding the scope of market freedom. I begin by recalling Hayek’s conception of responsibility and its association with learning. Then, I bring forward the concept of ‘experience’ that makes learning possible, as considered in Hayek’s psychological and evolutionary theory ([1952] 2014, [1960] 2011). Through the analysis of the conditions and situations where individuals may not be able to gain experience and thus, be unable to learn, I propose an identification of the limits of market freedom in Hayek’s thought. Finally, I discuss how considering the limits of experience gaining may help interpret Hayek’s wide remarks on plausible policy intervention.