Stephen Stigler's JHET article, “Statisticians and the History of Economics,” rightly suggested that more attention should be given to analyzing the contributions of statisticians in the development of economic theory. It also asked in passing whether E. E. Slutsky should best be regarded as a mathematical statistician oran economist, Stiglerhimself opting forthe former characterization (Stigler 2002, p. 159). This seemingly innocuous question opens up a lively and interesting range of issues, one to which this historian would like to make a small contribution from both a “Russian studies” and a “history of ideas” viewpoint.

It is a matter of fact that happiness is once again one of the foci of interest for economists, the “professors of the dismal science” (Carlyle 1850, p. 43). This is also the conviction of the editor of the “Controversy” on Economics and Happiness in The Economic Journal in 1997: “Economists from different backgrounds … all believe that happiness must play a more central role in economic science once again” (Dixon 1997, p. 1812). Dixon's thesis is twofold: (a) “Once again”: the reference is to the Neapolitan pubblica felicita (public happiness), developedby Genovesi andothers in the mid-1700s. In fact, Dixon sees a link between the new interest on happiness by contemporary economists andthe XVIII century debate on “public happiness” in the Latin countries, and in Italy in particular, as he explicitly says in a footnote; (b) “More central role” according to Dixon, is that happiness nowadays does not play a central role in economics.

In the aftermath of the Great War and the Bolshevik revolution, the years 1920–1925 witnessed a great upsurge of academic writing in Britain on Karl Marx's theory of value. We shall not seek to explain this phenomenon but it may nevertheless be of interest first to sketch, as a contrasting background, the limited interest shown in this topic in the pages of the Economic Journal, 1891–1920. For that journal did indeed, in that period, devote considerable space to matters socialist—taken in a broad sense (see Steedman 1990).

Jeremiah Whittle Jenks currently ranks as one of the more obscure academic economists of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. While other prominent economists of the era such as Richard T. Ely and John Bates Clark have been the subject of many books and articles (Everett 1946, Rader 1966, and Henry 1996, for example) Jenks remains almost unknown and unheralded. For instance, he is scarcely mentioned in the relevant volume of Joseph Dorfman's The Economic Mind in American Civilization (Dorfman 1948, III), despite his very substantial scholarly and public roles in the economics of the day. He was likewise below the radar of Joseph A. Schumpeter's (1954) magisterial, History of Economic Analysis, and Mark Blaug's (1985) Economic Theory in Retrospect. Where Jenks's career has attracted scholarly notice, the aspects examined have focused less on his economic scholarship and more on his public policy roles. (Green 1956, Weinstein 1968, Furner 1975, Parrini and Sklar 1983) The reasons for Jenks's relative neglect are unclear, although several hypotheses will be entertained below.

James M. Buchanan is a unique figure in modern economics. A Nobel Prize winner and a pioneer of public choice theory, he is in some ways a respected pillar of the profession. Yet at the same time, he is an outspoken critic of certain fundamental practices of mainstream economics who refuses to confine his work within the conventional boundaries of the discipline. Whether seen as an innovator or an iconoclast, he has consistently been among the most methodologically and philosophically self-aware of the profession's elite.

For those readers who are not familiar with the history of Italian economic thought, the Cost of Reproduction Doctrine (CRD) is an interpretation ofthe theory of value developed by the distinguished scholar Francesco Ferrara (1810–1900) around the middle of the nineteenth century. This was a time when many of the flaws of the classical system had been identified but the analytical tools needed for their elimination were not yet available.