The History of Economic Thought
Online ISSN : 1884-7358
Print ISSN : 1880-3164
ISSN-L : 1880-3164
Volume 55, Issue 1
Displaying 1-18 of 18 articles from this issue
  • A Japanese Civil-Society Economist and Historian of Economic Thought of Postwar Japan
    Nobuo Suzuki
    2013 Volume 55 Issue 1 Pages 1-17
    Published: 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: August 23, 2019
    JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS
    Abstract: It is very difficult to summarize the thought of Uchida Yoshihiko (1913-1989), one of the representative intellectuals of postwar Japan, but, we could describe the pursuit of Uchida as a search for a way to foster independent and self-reliant individuals of Japanese citizenship and to realize a fair and flexible society in Japan. He started his pursuit by resisting the authoritarianism prevalent in academic circles and the main left-wing groups of Japanese society. He made strenuous efforts to find signs of Homo economicus in modern Japanese society and enthusiastically advocated the ac-ademic and educational need of cultivating the spirit of developing and fostering democratic system, while believing in the civilizing influence of capital: “Everything old and outdated will be thoroughly recast and rebuilt according to the requirement of capital,” he argued, believing this to be an inevitable result of the advancement of economic law and the development of productivity. We can see key ideas underlying his lifelong works in his contribution to Daigaku Shinbun (University Papers) of November 1945, “Newspapers and Democracy”: “The nature of decision forming of a democratic society . . . should be seen in such a society where the people themselves obtain and activate huge, multiple social perspectives by exchanging and carefully examining the ideas expressed by the people of various positions who responsibly see and think for themselves.” Thus, his aim was to actualize an antiauthoritarian and enlightened idea of our society. JEL classification numbers: B 12, B 14, B 41.
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  • Jan Greitens
    2013 Volume 55 Issue 1 Pages 18-35
    Published: 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: August 23, 2019
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    Abstract: Finance Capital, written in 1910 by Rudolf Hilferding, is normally understood to be a Marxian work about financial systems, and banks in particular. Because Hilferding was a close friend of his mentor, Karl Kautsky, it is seen as a contribution to the Re-visionist Debate within the German Social Democratic Party at the beginning of the 20th century. But this view does not do justice to Hilferdingʼs approach to and objec-tives for Finance Capital. Hilferding took up many ideas from Marxian and Non-Marxian authors like Parvus, Otto Bauer, John A. Hobson, Ferdinand Tönnies, and authors of the emerging corporate finance literature. It is this broad influence that dif-ferentiates Hilferdingʼs work from other socialist writings at that time. JEL Classifications: B 14, B 19, B 31.
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  • Acceptance and Diffusion in the United States
    Yusuke Yoshino
    2013 Volume 55 Issue 1 Pages 36-52
    Published: 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: August 23, 2019
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    In this paper, we consider F. A. Hayekʼs The Road to Serfdom and the diffusion of the bookʼs ideas in the United States. The contributions of Fritz Machlup in the bookʼs development and acceptance are given special attention.   Although The Road to Serfdom is Hayekʼs best-selling book, many Hayekian scholars choose to focus on his other work. Here, we ana-lyze the ideas of The Road to Serfdom in detail, so that we can find new aspects of Hayekʼs early thought and determine why the book has be-come so influential. Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom for the intelligentsia of England, but its impact was felt most strongly by the general populous of the United States. Hayek maintained the core ideas of the book, the rule of law and meaning of com-petition, in his later work, such as The Constitu-tion of Liberty and Law, Legislation, and Liber-ty. Hayek and Machlup were in contact with each other their entire lives. The Hoover Institu-tion, a think tank at Stanford University, houses large amounts of correspondence that illustrate the friendship between the two men. Some mate-rial shows Machlup putting great efforts toward publishing The Road to Serfdom in the United States. Eventually, Aaron Director and Frank Knight helped Hayek publish the book with The University of Chicago Press. The condensed, il-lustrated version of The Road to Serfdom played an important role in diffusing its ideas to a gen-eral readership in the United States. The publication of The Road to Serfdom was the beginning of a long relationship with the University of Chicago for Hayek, and the suc-cess of the book enabled him to immigrate to the United States. Indeed, we argue that The Road to Serfdom was the prototype for his later books, The Constitution of Liberty and Law, Legisla-tion, and Liberty. However, we believe there is a disparity between how Hayek viewed his ideas and the way people interpreted his work. One of the primary reasons for this was the difference in the usage of the word “liberal” in England and the United States. JEL classification numbers: B 25, B 31.
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  • Compared with K. W. Kapp and R. H. Coase
    Shogo Nishibayashi
    2013 Volume 55 Issue 1 Pages 53-74
    Published: 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: August 23, 2019
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    In this paper, I place A. V. Kneeseʼs water quali-ty management system into a lineage of “exter-nal diseconomy.” Although Kneese is recog-nized as one of the most influential environmen-tal economists by some scholars, his work has fallen out of favor. However, his arguments are still effective when we examine the problem of modern environmental pollution. Environmental pollution is classified as an external diseconomy, a concept that is generally acknowledged to have originated in A. C. Pig-ouʼs book, The Economics of Welfare. To reme-dy the problem of external diseconomy, tradi-tional approaches in the Pigouvian and Coasean tradition have suggested “Pigouvian taxes” or the “Coase Theorem.” Kneese critically ad-dressed both theories and the prevailing policy tools pertaining to water quality management by considering water pollution in 1960s United States. Kneeseʼs work on water quality management has been characterized in the following manner: “Kneese is the first economist after Pigou to treat externalities analytically and, at the same time, express a serious concern for pollution.” As stated above, Kneeseʼs work is based on the concept of external diseconomy. However, there is a clear difference between how Pigou and Kneese conceptualize the effects of external dis-economy. The nature of this difference lies in the criticism of external diseconomy by W. K. Kapp and R. H. Coase. Kapp criticized external diseconomy by arguing the concept of “social cost” from the standpoint of “institutional eco-nomics,” and Coase criticized it by arguing the concept of “transaction cost” from the standpoint of “new-institutional economics.” Kneeseʼs ex-ternality argument, which was influenced by the criticism of Kapp and Coase, takes both “institu-tional” and “new-institutional” standpoints. JEL classification numbers: B 15, Q 50.
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  • Tetsuo Taka
    2013 Volume 55 Issue 1 Pages 75-85
    Published: 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: August 23, 2019
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    The rapid economic growth from the late 19th century in America was achieved with policies representing ʻAmerican Exceptionalism.ʼ It jus-tified the protection of infant industries to make America independent from the old and feudalistic European Powers. The main econom-ic policies consisted of the internal laissez-fair and the external protectionism. American eco-nomic thought was obliged to change from the traditional field of moral philosophy to explain-ing practical economic policies when modern scientific technologies created the emergency of labor management conflict in factories employ-ing high industrial productivity and a mass of unskilled labors. The outbreak of the so-called social problem promoted the establishment of economic depart-ment in universities, educating new business men for managing new large industries and oth-er public services. The universities required the training of faculty members to teach graduate courses. In the graduate courses of economics, main textbooks sifted from J. S. Millʼs Principles to A. Marshallʼs Economics and the writings of German Historical School. Since graduate stu-dents wanted to learn practical economics, seek-ing appropriate policies for solving social prob-lems, studentʼs research works into fundamental theories and thoughts of economics slighted. This situation began to change in the 1920ʼs, when economists and graduate students began to seek new methods to achieve a theoretically uni-fied system of economics appropriate for the American economy. The making of American economics, therefore, indispensably accompa-nied with the study of the economic thoughts in order to ascertain its origins and significances in the historical studies, and not a few outstanding works were written at that time. JEL classification numbers: B 1, B 13, B 15.
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  • A Survey of the Past Twenty Years
    Makoto Okuyama
    2013 Volume 55 Issue 1 Pages 86-104
    Published: 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: August 23, 2019
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    The purpose of this paper is to survey German and Japanese studies of Werner Sombartʼs thought during the past 20 years. The Heilbronn Conference in 1991, organized by Jürgen Back-haus, led to a Sombart revival that followed “a renaissance of the German Historical School” in the 1980s. Many scholars were encouraged to reconsider the contributions of Sombart to the development of German economics. Section I of this paper offers an explanation of why an energetic rediscovery of Sombart has occurred in the past 20 years. Section II proffers commentary on three excellent books and arti-cles on Sombart published in Germany (Appel 1992; Brocke 1992; Lenger 1994). These three works deserve to be discussed in detail because they provide fresh insights into Sombartʼs life, academic achievements, and his influence on contemporaries as well as later generations. In addition, the three volumes edited by Backhaus (1996 a; 1996 b; 1996 c) that summarize the re-sults of the Heilbronn conference are noted, along with the work of Takebayashi (2003), which is one of the most valuable studies focus-ing on Sombart and Weber during the past dec-ade. Section III considers recent publications on Sombart in Japan. Since the late 1990s, Japanese Sombart studies concerning the history of eco-nomic thought have been on the rise, perhaps in-spired by the outstanding studies in Germany that occurred nearly a decade earlier. Tamura(1996; 1997; 1998), Yanagisawa (1998; 2001), Makino (2003), and a few emerging scholars will be reviewed here. In this section, the rela-tive novelty of recent Japanese studies on Som-bart is elucidated in comparison with that of re-cent German scholarship. Section IV provides suggestions as to what subjects may merit fur-ther exploration in the future. JEL classification numbers: B 15, B 21, B 31.
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  • Masahiro Kawamata
    2013 Volume 55 Issue 1 Pages 106-107
    Published: 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: November 27, 2019
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  • Junsuke Miyamoto
    2013 Volume 55 Issue 1 Pages 108-109
    Published: 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: November 27, 2019
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  • Masashi Kondo
    2013 Volume 55 Issue 1 Pages 110-111
    Published: 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: November 27, 2019
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  • Shinro Iwashita
    2013 Volume 55 Issue 1 Pages 112-113
    Published: 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: November 27, 2019
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  • Yoshihiro Yamazaki
    2013 Volume 55 Issue 1 Pages 114-115
    Published: 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: November 27, 2019
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  • Masao Ohkura
    2013 Volume 55 Issue 1 Pages 116-117
    Published: 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: November 28, 2019
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  • Chikakazu Tadakoshi
    2013 Volume 55 Issue 1 Pages 118-119
    Published: 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: November 28, 2019
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  • Hiroshi Kawamata
    2013 Volume 55 Issue 1 Pages 120-121
    Published: 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: November 28, 2019
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  • Shuji Nohara
    2013 Volume 55 Issue 1 Pages 122-123
    Published: 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: November 28, 2019
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  • Hiroyuki Furuya
    2013 Volume 55 Issue 1 Pages 124-125
    Published: 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: November 28, 2019
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  • Atsushi Naito
    2013 Volume 55 Issue 1 Pages 126-127
    Published: 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: November 28, 2019
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  • Keiichi Watanabe
    2013 Volume 55 Issue 1 Pages 128-129
    Published: 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: November 28, 2019
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