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The purpose of this paper is to examine the writings of Joseph Schumpeter on economic man to demonstrate that Schumpeter is a precursor of personalist economics.

This paper addresses two intertwined questions. What evidence supports the claim that Schumpeter rejected homo economicus? What evidence indicates that Schumpeter actually embraced the human person – the acting person – as a replacement for homo economicus? The evidence is presented in four sections: Schumpeter’s rejection of homo economicus; Schumpeter on economic agency; Schumpeter, a precursor of personalist economics; and final remarks.

As to the first question, there is no doubt that Schumpeter rejected homo economicus. Regarding the second, the evidence does not indicate that Schumpeter proposed replacing homo economicus with what today we refer to as the acting person. This paper concludes that by insisting on the critical role of the active, spontaneous, and eager-to-initiate change entrepreneur in economic affairs and our understanding of those affairs Schumpeter was a precursor of personalist economics.

To a large extent Schumpeter’s insights regarding economic agency and William Waters role in interpreting those insights have been buried in the economics literature. It was Waters in 1952 who stated that Schumpeter identified the inadequacy of economic man as the efficient cause of economic activity and re-established the human person as the true efficient cause, principally in terms of entrepreneurship.

Within the Federal Government, there is a manufacturing operation, the Government Printing Office (GPO), that operates without subsidy or direct appropriation from Congress and that must recover its total costs—including labor, materials, overhead, amortization of machinery, and operation of its buildings—just as any large corporation must do if it intends to remain in business.

This paper examines the Random Walk Hypothesis (RWH) for aggregate New Zealand share market returns, as well as the CRSP NYSE‐AMEX (USA) index during the 1980‐2001 period. Using several indices, we rely on the variance‐ratio test and find evidence to support the rejection of the RWH with some evidence of a momentum effect. However, we find evidence to suggest the behaviour of share prices to be time‐dependent in New Zealand. For example, we find the indices tested were closer to random after the 1987 share market crash. Further analysis showed even stronger results for periods subsequent to the passage of the Companies Act 1993 and the Financial Reporting Act 1993. We also find evidence that indices based on large capitalisation stocks are more likely to follow a random walk compared to those based on smaller stocks. For the USA index, we find stronger evidence of random behaviour in our sample period compared to the earlier period examined by Lo and Mackinlay (1988)

Is social contact with the customer either necessary or profitable to a service industry? Does the salesgirl sell? Or, is she just a packaging‐and‐money‐taking component in a selling organisation? We have had the self‐service restaurant with us for several years, why not the self‐service pub? And in transportation, the Victoria Line is almost fully automated. Need an airline provide more than comfortable seats and a convenient schedule of flights? Just how important is it to have a pleasing social relationship with the customer? Obviously, the answers to these questions depend on a variety of factors in any given situation; and, inevitably a prime factor is the economic one. The situation for the airlines is an unusual one: market competition is constrained by the international regulation of fares and schedules and even of the type of meal service on particular routes. As a result the airlines compete in such narrow areas as the ambience of the passengers' surroundings and the social skills of their customer contact staffs.

Presents the scientific methodology from the enlarged cybernetical perspective that recognizes the anisotropy of time, the probabilistic character of natural laws, and the entry that the incomplete determinism in Nature opens to the occurrence of innovation, growth, organization, teleology communication, control, contest and freedom. The new tier to the methodological edifice that cybernetics provides stands on the earlier tiers, which go back to the Ionians (c. 500 BC). However, the new insights reveal flaws in the earlier tiers, and their removal strengthens the entire edifice. The new concepts of teleological activity and contest allow the clear demarcation of the military sciences as those whose subject matter is teleological activity involving contest. The paramount question “what ought to be done”, outside the empirical realm, is embraced by the scientific methodology. It also embraces the cognitive sciences that ask how the human mind is able to discover, and how the sequence of discoveries might converge to a true description of reality.

The earliest law of the adulteration of food imposed divisions among the local authorities of the day in functions and enforcements; most of the urban and rural sanitary authorities possessed no power under the law. Provisions dealing with unfit food — diseased, unsound, unwholesome or unfit for human food — were not in the first sale of food and drugs measure and there duties were wholly discharged by all local authorities. Rural sanitary authorities were excluded from food and drugs law and boroughs and urban authorities severly restricted. Enforcement in the rural areas was by the county council, although local officers were empowered to take samples of food and submit them for analysis to the public analyst. Power to appoint the public analyst for the area was the main criterion of a “food and drugs authority”. The Minister had power to direct an authority with a population of less than 40,000 but more than 20,000 to enforce the law of adulteration.

Faith‐based activism in living wage campaigns is on the rise. Summarizes recent campaigns to enact living wage ordinances in US municipalities, underscoring the role of community‐church partnerships such as Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice, and other local organizations in the struggle for wage justice. Explores the theological bases of this activism by tracing the evolution of the concept of a just, living wage in Christian social economic thought. To illustrate the historical and philosophical roots of living wage discourse, provides textual analysis of major Roman Catholic and Episcopal Church documents and briefly considers writings by US social economists in the first half of the twentieth century.

ABB Robotics Ltd, UK distributors of ABB Trallfa Robots, has appointed Chris Lines — a product specialist with over 12 years experience of robotic paint systems — to concentrate on ABB Trallfa robot sales and marketing in the United Kingdom. The new job function, to be based at Milton Keynes, will be closely coordinated with other ABB Trallfa Robot centres, as the company further integrates its European robotic operations.

I suggest that the search for Adam Smith’s theodicy is likely to be in vain. The paper begins with a brief history of approaches to evil, emphasizing the context in which they arose, and the questions authors were addressing. Approaches most relevant to Adam Smith include those of Augustine and Calvin, and the early modern theodicies of Leibniz, Samuel Clarke and William King, as well as the attacks on them by Bayle and Voltaire. Scottish Enlightenment writers were not terribly interested in theodicy, though Hutcheson and Kames did devote space to their versions of problems of evil. David Hume’s Dialogues on Natural Religion are often taken to be classic statement of the problem of theodicy and argument against religious belief, but his concern was to demolish rationalistic theodicies rather than religious belief or practice. The paper then turns to Smith’s writings, considering similarities and differences to these approaches to evil. Smith emphasizes the wisdom and beneficence of God, and that evils we observe are part of a larger providential plan. He makes no attempt to justify the God in the face of evil, and in this respect Smith shares more with Augustine and Calvin than he does with the early modern theodicists. Smith’s approach to evil is simple and ameliorative. Smith’s approach contrasts with early nineteenth century English political economists, from Malthus onwards, for whom theodicy was important. Whatever view we take of the theodicists project of justifying an all-powerful and good God in the face of evil may, we still struggle to make sense of economic suffering and evil.

Bernard Malamud said “…a short story packs a self in a few pages predicating a lifetime. The drama is tense, happens fast, and is more often than not outlandish. In a few pages the story portrays the complexity of a life while producing the surprise and effect of knowledge…” According to Helen Haines, “The short story may be, perhaps, best defined as the equivalent in fiction to the lyric in poetry and the one‐act play in drama: the intensified, concentrated expression of an idea or theme…It demands greater, but less sustained, mastery of style than does the novel…The brevity of the short story, while it limits, also makes for freedom…” The freedoms it allows include posing problems without solutions, ignoring logical development to a conclusion, and referring to vague ideas which are never detailed. These allowable omissions of the short story lead to its great power for the reader. For a short story is only completed through the interaction of its reader. “The readers are forced into active collaboration: they flesh out the story through memory, sympathy, and insight, and they feel its truth as immediately as a toothache.”