Giandomenica Becchio

When Italian economics "Was Second to None". Luigi Einaudi and the Turin School of Economics

Abstract The article is dedicated to the work of a group of economists that was an important expression of a fertile season of Italian economics, in the period from the mid-1890s to the end of 1930s, which developed around the figure of Luigi Einaudi, and earlier, around that of his master Cognetti de Martiis. This School expressed a range of thought of high value in the political and economic sphere. In the economic field, the School established a fertile relation between historical–empirical work and economic theory; in the political field it investigated the relation between freedom and economic order.

A NOTE ON THE INFLUENCE OF MACH'S PSYCHOLOGY IN THE SENSORY ORDER

Purpose – The aim of this note is to explain what Hayek meant when in The Sensory Order he claimed that Mach was one of his fundamental readings in psychology while he was writing The Sensory Order. Methodology/approach – A historical approach to show the different role Mach played in Hayek and Neurath/Carnap. Findings•A parallelism between Mach–Kant and Hayek–Mach in psychology.•Hayeks rejection of Machs final philosophical approach as well as his aversion against the Vienna Circles positivism as forms of metaphysics, based on an awkward definition of isomorphism. Research limitations/implications•The human sciences cannot be reduced to the natural sciences.•Any form of knowledge is knowledge of “how” rather than of “what”. Originality/value of the paper•To show Machs role in Hayeks psychology.•To consider The Sensory Order as a relevant part of Hayeks struggle against reductionism in psychology.

A note on the History of Gender Economics and Feminist Economics: Not the same story

Research into subjective well-being suggests that happier people are healthier and more professionally productive, achieve goals more easily and are more often successful in personal relationships. Unfortunately, studies in the USA and Britain suggest that there has been an overall decline in selfreported well-being since the 1970s, particularly for females. Data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey appear to corroborate the international evidence. Using HILDA 2001 to 2011 data, this chapter investigates: levels of life satisfaction; association between life satisfaction and social connectedness; and whether declines in life satisfaction can be explained by declines in social connectedness. A positive association is found between life satisfaction and almost all measures of social connectedness for both genders. This association, however, only partly explains observed declines in life satisfaction. This research emphasises the importance of frequent, meaningful social connections and the urgency for governments to address declining well-being.

Ethics and economics in Karl Menger

Menger disagreed with this view for various reasons. Also, the subjective expectation is infinite. There are many cases where mans behaviour fails to conform to mathematical expectations: games in which a player can win only one very large amount with a very small probability or games offering a single moderate amount with a very high probability. Furthermore, we can always find a sequence of payoffs x1, x2, x3,…, which yield infinite expected value, and then propose, say, that u(xn)=2n, so that expected utility is also infinite. Menger therefore proposed that utility must also be bounded above for paradoxes of this type to be resolved.