Abstract: Dazai Shundai （1680―1747） associated the problem of the interest in people’s welfare by creating useful means for which they enriched their lives with institutionalization processes of political economy in the early eighteenth-century Japan. He meant that the purpose of public welfare-to cause stability and prosperity of the community and people’s lives in general-was established as a part of practical learning, through institutionalization. This offered a practical approach to rationality. 　 Dazai linked “the road to public welfare by interests” with the management of the state and human relief. When he attempted to discuss the problem of the ‘the law of joheiso’ as an institutional framework, on the basis of the theme of public welfare of people by interest, his philosophy of political economy contained a systematic design for welfare and economy. This included the manner in which a solution that loses touch with private interests is able to adjust “the world and the nation” as external public interests. 　 However, Dazai’s conclusion was unable to absorb in a unilateral manner the frame cost in order to advance institutionalization, and would overload public welfare. Before creating an institutional design, what can morality in the social climate constitute in the institutional performance among incentive structures? The activation, based on moral recognition, widely needed the foundation of the institutional design for public welfare and its spillover effect. In this sense, Dazai’s image of humankind was that of an uncooperative situation, which was due to his belief that people were unable to be endogenous in their learning function. JEL classification numbers: B 11, H 11, N 35.

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The purpose of this article is to examine the changes in the role played by the government in the market according to the theories of the French political economy from the 1780s to the 1830s. These theories are generally regarded as the precursors of “economics.” This article reveals that these theories attempt to use the market politically aiming to develop the people’s “well-being” or “happiness,” and to redefine the government’s role in the market. At the beginning of nineteenth century, J. B. Say and C. Dunoyer emphasized the political significance of a free industrial market. According to them, it enables the people’s “moeurs” to be independent and self-disciplined, so as to establish a post-revolutionary political order. Some contemporary political economists such as J. Droz and M. T. Duchâtel doubted the compatibility between the accumulation of wealth and the development of “happiness” of the people. They asserted the need for elementary education as it leads to the redistribution of “new wealth.” Moreover, social economists from the 1830s, such as A. de Villeneuve- Bargemont and E. Buret, emphatically discussed the perverse effect of industrialization, stating that the concentration of capital inevitably caused the pauperization of most of the people. They believed that the new role of the government should be the “moralization” of the poor through the organization of intermediate groups such as religious associations, saving associations, charity groups, mutual societies, and patriarchal families. JEL classification numbers: B 25, B 31

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This paper aims to study the characteristics of the principles of Karl William Kapp’s cumulative causation. While Kapp’s cumulative causation is strongly influenced by that of Gunnar Myrdal, it is not a model that merely explains disequilibrium or the “vicious circle” phenomena. Kapp was always interested in constructing a model that addresses issues arising from the compartmentalization of modern sciences. Therefore, his critique of mainstream economics should be understood in this context. 　 Kapp argued that the approaches of mainstream economics were misleading because they isolated economic systems from non-economic elements. According to him, the trend toward the compartmentalization of mainstream economics could be inhibited by employing a cumulativecausation approach. Kapp’s institutional economics, which integrates cumulative causation, is an approach that refutes the atomistic views of the world proposed by mainstream economics. Through these atomistic views, individuals regarded as eternal; however, Kapp’s approach regards them as transient phenomena appearing in holistic dynamic processes. Furthermore, his approach shows that a human being is an existence with a multi-level construction. 　 A human being is a “bio-cultural” existence that grows physically and personally, incorporating material and energy from nature, and culture from the society. Some societies ignore the latent ability of their members and attempt to limit them to the mould of a particular culture. Kapp described this aspect by means of principles of cumulative causation. JEL classification numbers: B 25, B 31, Q 50.

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