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In his bestselling The Worldly Philosophers, Robert Heilbroner puts the focus on the visions and analyses of the great economic thinkers from Adam Smith to Joseph A. Schumpeter. Worldly philosophy is considered as a child of capitalism and worldly philosophers as system-builders addressing the long-run development of the economy and the society. This implies viewing the economy as historically and institutionally situated demanding a more interdisciplinary perspective and embedding economics in the social sciences. The article compares the work of Heilbroner and Adolph Lowe who was Heilbroner’s main mentor. The focus is on their reflections on Smith and Schumpeter. Heilbroner considered Smith as the first worldly philosopher of whose Wealth of Nations a German translation was published already in 1776 in Stuttgart, Lowe’s native city. Lowe’s early work on business cycles was strongly inspired by Marx and Schumpeter’s emphasis on the role of capital accumulation and technical progress as well as Schumpeter’s distinction between statics and dynamics. Lowe was forced to emigrate from Nazi Germany in spring 1933, only half a year after Schumpeter’s move to Harvard where Heilbroner studied in the late 1930s when Schumpeter enjoyed making provocative statements on the Great Depression which was still not yet overcome.

The first foreign-language publication of The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money by John Maynard Keynes was published in German in the same year as the English original in 1936. The article discusses some quality problems of the translation, but focuses in particular on the controversies which evolved around interpretations of the Preface Keynes wrote for the German edition. Whereas a margin of doubt remains as to the responsibility for the text which finally appeared in German, any accusations that Keynes had sympathies for or was indifferent to the Nazi regime are clearly rejected.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the high rates of economic growth of the US economy and the remarkable acceleration of productivity growth since the mid‐1990s which is widely attributed to the modern information and communication technologies (ICTs).

After identifying three key factors for Solow's productivity puzzle and examining ICTs as a general purpose technology, three main channels of ICTs' impact in the economy are discussed: the first transmission channel is direct and consists of the effects generated by rapid technical progress within the ICT‐capital goods producing sector. The second one is due to the increasing accumulation and application of ICT goods and services in the user sectors. ICTs' positive spillover effects comprise the third transmission channel, i.e. they lead to “disembodied” increases in efficiency in the sense of “learning by doing” in the end‐user sector.

The diffusion of ICTs requires investment in all industries, i.e. the improvement of competitiveness on the macro level is strongly linked to investment activities and skill qualifications on the micro level.

The paper concludes with some comparisons between the US and the German economy where the acute need for infrastructure investment in East Germany in the 1990s limited the possibilities for investment in ICTs exactly at a time of high‐technological dynamism at the start of an upswing of a new Kondratieff cycle. Although some comparisons with the EU are made the impact of ICTs in other countries except the USA and Germany is not discussed more intensively.

A very useful source of information for graduate students and policy makers alike on the theoretical and empirical impact of new technologies on economic development.

This paper fulfils an information need for comparing growth in international perspective.

This is an unusual book and a striking phenomenon. It comprises a collection of thirteen essays on the German Historical School of Economics (henceforth GHSE), exclusively written by Japanese contributors who are mainly full professors at leading universities and mostly have already published on various aspects of the GHSE. The editor, Yuichi Shionoya, is well known internationally as one of the most prominent students of Joseph Schumpeter and Max Weber, whose works provide the basis for the editor’s attempt to erect the framework of the rational reconstruction of the GHSE in the opening essay. This holds in particular for economic sociology, which – besides theory, history and statistics – constitutes the fourth discipline in economics, and includes the social institutions relevant to economic behaviour and also political, legal or religious aspects. The investigation of Schumpeter’s conception of economic sociology (see, e.g. Schumpeter, 1954, pp. 20–21) is at the very heart of Shionoya’s second essay (9) in which the author concludes that Schumpeter combined two essential elements of the GHSE, a belief in the unity of social life and the inseparable relationship among its components and a concern for development, with some stimulus by Max Weber’s analysis of comparative-static social systems and Marx’s analysis of the dynamic process of capital accumulation. It is Shionoya’s belief “that Schumpeter should be regarded as one of the successors of the German Historical School because he attempted a rational reconstruction of that school, especially Schmoller’s research program, in terms of economic sociology and made his own contribution from this perspective” (p. 9). Whether and how this statement from the editor’s first essay fully fits with the one from Shionoya’s second essay, that “Schumpeter’s conception of economic sociology intended to integrate history and theory, the antitheses at the Methodenstreit between Gustav von Schmoller and Carl Menger” (p. 139), is left to the reader’s judgement. Characteristically, the contradictions involved can be found in Schumpeter’s own writings. In the very same year, 1926, in which he published the article “Gustav von Schmoller and the Problems of Today,” which forms the key basis for Shionoya’s argument, Schumpeter eliminated the seventh chapter on “The Overall View of the Economy” of the first German edition of The Theory of Economic Development from the second German one and omitted it in all later editions of the book, including the 1934 English translation. The reason was that Schumpeter believed that this chapter with its much broader perspective and its fragment of cultural sociology has sometimes distracted the reader’s attention from pure and “dry” economic reasoning. It had led to a kind of consent which was at the very opposite of his intentions in so far as the seventh chapter was misunderstood as an alternative to economic theory. For that kind of reasoning Schumpeter did not want to provide any ammunition. For Shionoya, on the other hand, Chap. 7 is not a fragment of cultural sociology but a research program for a universal social science that he has specified in an earlier article (Shionoya, 1990) in which he regrets Schumpeter’s decision to omit it.

Streissler considers Roscher′s theory of crisis to be highly original and important. Schumpeter, on the other hand, considers it only a rehash of the ideas of others. Examines this contradiction, beginning with a reflection on the essential elements of the debates on Keynes, Say′s law and classical economics. Continues by analysing the statements of German economists before Roscher on the issues of the general glut controversy. Ends with a closer inspection of Roscher′s own theory of crisis.

After a long hiatus, psychology and economics today are back in conversation with each other: active research programs in behavioral economics, neuro-economics, and the economics of happiness bespeak a thriving cross-disciplinary discussion. Yet for most of the twentieth century, economists distanced themselves from psychology; when they spoke of science, they referred, in the first instance, to the physical sciences, then perhaps to the biological sciences. A hundred years ago, however, American intellectuals viewed psychology as a progressive science and economics as traditionalist – mired in the antiquated notions of laissez-faire and individualism. A social science that assumed individuals knew their preferences, directed their actions toward fulfilling them in a rational manner, and in the process engaged others in dispassionate exchange, was clearly not speaking to the issues of the modern world. The death of progressivism in the wake of WW I only reinforced the rise of psychology: good intentions weren’t enough, motives were suspect, rational individuals went mad in the midst of conflict and turmoil, complex emotions ruled. Careful psychological analysis could, however, enable society to gain some degree of control over the fundamental irrationality of human action.

The Nationalökonomische Gesellschaft (Austrian Economic Association, NOeG) provides a prominent example of the Viennese economic circles and associations that more than academic economics dominated scientific discourse in the interwar years. For the first time this chapter gives a thorough account of its history, from its foundation in 1918 until the demise of its long-time president, Hans Mayer, 1955, based on official documents and archival material. The topics treated include its predecessor and rival, the Gesellschaft österreichischer Volkswirte, its foundation in 1918 soon to be followed by years of inactivity, the relaunch by Mayer and Mises, the survival under the NS-regime and the expulsion of its Jewish members and the slow restoration after 1945. In particular, an attempt is made to provide a list of the papers presented to the NOeG, as complete as possible, for the period 1918–1938.