In his 1989 Cambridge doctoral dissertation, The Concept of Equilibrium in Neoclassical Theory, Franco Donzelli observed that, “The history of the neoclassical approach over the last one hundred and twenty years can be interpreted as a history of the relationship between instantaneous and stationary equilibrium models, on the one hand, and of the developments internal to either class of models, on the other” (Donzelli 1989, p. 31).

From Jacob Viner (1927) to David A. Reisman (1998), Adam Smith's departures from an advocacy of laissez-faire in The Wealth of Nations have been interpreted by a number of scholars. In this paper, we examine one of the oddest, and perhaps least noticed, of those departures. That was Smith's defense of the civil law of lay patronage in the established Presbyterian Church of Scotland, which appears in his discussion of the social benefits and potential social costs of institutions for religious instruction. A lay patron was a non-cleric individual who held the right under civil law to select the minister of a local parish church. In Smith's time, roughly two-thirds of the lay patrons in Scotland were wealthy landowners and one-third were crown officials. In addition, municipal corporations (cities) and universities held some patronage rights.

John Bates Clark (1847–1938) holds a secure position in the history of American economic thought. Specifically, he is remembered for developing the marginal product theory of distribution, which was presented in its most complete form in The Distribution of Wealth (1899). However, Clark's primary intellectual commitment has been largely overlooked. This was his search for the rules and institutions that would create a prosperous economy featuring a just distribution while maintaining the essential structures of competitive capitalism.

[First page missing from the archive] … embitterment against society; but anarchism assimilates to itself that hostility to law which naturally results from evil doing. The antipathy of the rogue for the halter reinforces this movement. It gathers to itself disreputable elements, and by its outbreaks moves society to resistance. It is a self-terminating movement.

Socialism appeals to better classes and has far more strength. Attack the state and you excite feelings of loyalty even among the disaffected classes; but attack the industrial system and appeal to the state, and you may have loyalty in your favor.

More than sixty-five years have passed since Michal Kalecki (1935) published one of the first formal mathematical models of business cycles. His paper presents a closed-form analytic solution. This characteristic, among others, sets Kalecki's work apart from that of contemporary literary business cycle theorists such as Friedrich A. Hayek (1935) and John Maynard Keynes (1936).

It is to be regretted that Nikolai Kondratiev's 1928 paper on long cycles—“The price dynamics of industrial and agricultural commodities: the theory of relative dynamics and conjuncture”—was omitted from the Pickering and Chatto English language edition of his works published in 1998. This is one of the two most important papers excluded from this edition, the other being the full text of his plan for agriculture and forestry, 1924–28. In response, this note discusses some modifications that occurred in Kondratiev's explanation of long cycles between 1925 and 1928, and puts to rest the suggestion that these changes might have taken place as the result of political factors rather than a genuine change of mind. I also counter some ofmy critics who have taken issue with my presentation of Kondratiev's conception of long cycles (most notably Jan Reijnders (2001) in this journal), and link this with a more general discussion of some of the methodological issues involved.

Students of economics no longer study the history of economic thought for the simple reason that it is much too difficult. It requires a lot of reading of books that do not have convenient introductions and summaries, and so it takes up far too much time. As a consequence, most economists are not familiar with the great names of the past and are unable to place modern analyses in historical, or any other, perspective.

In the June 2001 issue of JHET, Paola Tubaro's name was inadvertently misspelled in the table of contents. The Editor apologizes for the error.