1,111 research outputs found

    Morality, institutions and economic growth: Lessons from ancient Greece

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    We show that the character and the morality of citizens are important ingredients of economic growth because they go hand in hand with the great institutions of private property, democ-racy, and free markets. Our approach enables us to establish this result by reference to the structure and performance of the ancient economies of Athens and Sparta during the period 490-338 BC. Athens grew vastly wealthier than Sparta essentially because its institutions were optimally adjusted to confront the basic scarcity of grains, whereas the institutions of Sparta were optimally adjusted to sustain its military supremacy. However, in both cases there emerged systems of morality, which secured the operating efficiency of their institutions. Therefore, poor countries in search of potent strategies for rapid economic growth should not just try to emulate the institutions of economically advanced countries. At the same time, they should put the emphasis of their efforts to setting up agoge systems, so as to infuse into the character of their citizens compatible “ethos”. For, without the latter, no matter how success-fully they adapt the institutions of democracy and free markets, rapid economic growth will be inhibited from the lack of an environment of generalized morality. In this regard, the ideal type model of agoge is the one that prevailed in ancient Athens 25 centuries ago.ancient Greece; morality; institutions; economic growth

    A Review of Kuhnian and Lakatosian “Explanations” in Economics

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    In the last few decades the influence on economics of the ideas of T. Kuhn and I. Lakatos was considerable. The increasing use of terms like “paradigms” and “scientific research programmes” in almost every field of economics, is indicative of the influence of these two philosophers. Furthermore, the introduction of the ideas of Kuhn and Lakatos in economics gave the stimulus for work on the nature of growth of economic knowledge. The paper starts by presenting the main influence of T. Kuhn on theories concerned with the evolution of economic theory. It continues with a review of the main criticisms regarding the appropriateness and applicability of Kuhnian ideas for economics. The same approach is followed in the case of I. Lakatos. After a classification and discussion of the main findings, the paper attempts to offer an interpretation of the general impact of these two philosophers science on ideas relating to the development of economic theories.Development of economics; Economic Methodology; Kuhn; Lakatos
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