Trustworthiness as a Moral Determinant of Economic Activity: Lessons from the Classics

This paper reviews the way that social norms and ethical values in general, and trustworthiness in particular, is perceived to affect the behavior of economic agents in view of the work of Adam Smith, Nassau William Senior and John Stuart Mill. Classical Political economists held that economic actions are context-dependent and thus constantly under the influence of social norms and values. It is further suggested here that Classical Economists had established that trustworthiness acts as a general ethical precondition for the efficient behaviour of the markets and an important asset of the national social capital. © 2009 Association for Social Economics

The varieties of economic rationality: From Adam Smith to contemporary behavioural and evolutionary economics

The concept of economic rationality is important for the historical evolution of Economics as a scientific discipline. The common idea about this concept -even between economists- is that it has a unique meaning which is universally accepted. This new volume argues that "economic rationality" is not not a universal concept with one single meaning, and that it in fact has different, if not conflicting, interpretations in the evolution of discourse on economics. In order to achieve this, the book traces the historical evolution of the concept of economic rationality from Adam Smith to the present, taking in thinkers from Mill to Friedman, and encompassing approaches from neoclassical to behavioural economics. The book charts this history in order to reveal important instances of conceptual transformation of the meaning of economic rationality. In doing so, it presents a uniquely detailed study of the historical change of the many faces of the homo oeconomicus. © 2014 Michel S. Zouboulaki

Covid-19 as a potential accelerator. A euro-centric perspective

In the words of the IMF, the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic have generated “a crisis like no other”. Economic shocks often result in social and political quivers within states but also affect relations between states. In the short conceptual note that follows, we concentrate on the European Union and we explore the possible effects the COVID-19 economic fallout will have on its already strained cohesion. We argue that it has the potential to act as an accelerator towards greater European integration. © 2020 De Gruyter. All rights reserved

Defence Spending and Sovereign Debt in Greece: A Long-Term Historical Perspective

The paper sets out to examine the military spending-public debt nexus in the case of Greece. Unlike previous studies that exclusively focus their analyses in the post-WWII period, the empirical investigation conducted herein covers almost the entire two hundred years of the modern Greek state. The estimations using an ARDL framework cover the period 1848-2018 as well as sub-periods therein. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to approach this issue in the case of Greece with such a long-Term perspective. In broad terms, the findings do not unearth a statistically traceable effect of defence expenditures on public debt accumulation. The results indicate that this was very much driven by debt dynamics and the need to draw funds to service existing loans. This finding is consistent across both the entire period under scrutiny here as well as the various sub-periods. © 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Modeling institutional change in transition economies

A particular aspect of path dependence and change is discussed here. To understand institutional change in transition economies, a game theoretic model that combines economic changes with changes in the social values system is proposed, in a mechanism where the two changes are interdependent and influence one another in a repeated game. The speed of change in this dynamic model is the result of two rates, the "learning rate", how fast agents are learning to play the new "capitalist" game and the so-called "going-over rate", the mix in every time period of economic agents playing according to the "old" communist values and those playing according to the "new" capitalist values. (c) 2005 The Regents of the University of California. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved