In a study of pre-classical monopoly theory published in 1951, Raymond de Roo ver started by briefly examining the doctrines held by the medieval scholastics. His analysis met with favorable response and was confirmed and further developed by later historians. The most satisfactory statement may still be that of Barry Gordon in his monograph on early economics. The consensus of these scholars can be summarized as follows. Medieval authors looked askance at the attempts by the guilds to establish minimum prices. They recognized the expediency of government grants of monopoly and regulation of prices of certain commodities. They strongly condemned private monopolies established for personal gain, as well as collusion among sellers for that purpose, price discrimination, engrossing, forestalling, regrating, and other forms of speculation. The just price was the current, competitive market price, free of all irregularities of these kinds and free of fraud and duress. Gordon adds that the schoolmen also sometimes referred to labor and cost factors, rather than the market, as estimates of the just price. These estimates were not necessarily contradictive but mutually supportive. They applied when the market was not working smoothly and when there was no market in operation at the time and place of the sale. When an exchange is concluded in a competitive market under normal circumstances, the going price can hardly be said to be unjust. It may sometimes seem uncharitable. There will always be some who cannot afford to pay the competitive price. Poor relief in medieval society, however, was mainly a matter of almsgiving. Unlike commutative justice, charity is not a workable ethical norm in the marketplace.

The Modern Archives, King's College, Cambridge University contain a carbon copy of a three-page single spaced manuscript with the title “A Passage From The Autobiography of an Analytical Economist” (RFK/16/2/134–139, hereinafter “Autobiography”). Joan Robinson's initials are typed at the end of the document, which is dated October 1932.

In October 1932, Heffer, the Cambridge University student bookstore, published Joan Robinson's methodological pamphlet, Economics is a Serious Subject, and she delivered the manuscript of The Economics of Imperfect Competition to Macmillan (Joan Robinson to Richard Kahn, October 30, 1932, RFK/13/90/1/19). The Autobiography was apparently drafted shortly after these two projects were completed. The typescript in Modern Archives, which seems to be the only extant copy, was not made until some months later. In a letter of March 2, 1933, Kahn suggested adding “a long section to your secret document if you can do so without spoiling it,” regretting that he had not asked her for a copy (RFK/13/90/1/162–67). She replied somewhat mysteriously, alluding to a superstitious reluctance to having it typed but admitting that eventually it would have to be done (March 23, 1933, RFK/13/90/1/205–208). Since the carbon copy refers to page 275 of her book, the Autobiography was not typed until she had seen the final set of page proofs, and perhaps not until the book had appeared.

Antonio De Viti de Marco is perhaps the most representative scholar at the origin of the Italian tradition in Public Finance, and his main work has been at the disposal of English-speaking economists since 1936 (De Viti de Marco 1936). However, at the time he was not particularly appreciated: his book had at the time one good and one bad review, but certainly left no mark on mainstream economic analysis. The fact is that De Viti's message was too far beyond the range of interests of Anglo-Saxon writers of the time.

In 1954, Paul A. Samuelson presented on just two and a half pages what he claimed to be “a pure theory of government expenditure on collective consumption goods” (1954c, p. 388). Just a year later, he supplemented this theory by an equivalent diagrammatic formulation and a few clarifying comments (Samuelson 1955). Although his initial paper was strongly criticized on various grounds, an industry was launched and public goods—or, as referred to initially by Samuelson, collective consumption goods—now play a crucial role in a number of theories like fiscal competition or endogenous growth, and in almost all textbooks on public economics or microeconomics at least a paragraph is devoted to public goods. In fact, Samuelson's 1954 paper is conventionally considered the foundation of the modern theory of public goods (for example, see Richard A. Musgrave 1983a, p. 141). However, the many contributions to the modern theory of public goods, including Samuelson's subsequent writings, have revealed that there is widespread disagreement both on fundamental aspects of the theory as well as on its significance for the determination of government expenditure.

This paper investigates the influence of Allyn Abbott Young's theoretical work on the groundbreaking contributions of early development theorists, Paul Rosenstein-Rodan and Ragnar Nurkse. The work of Allyn Young had a significant impact on early development theory as the above-mentioned pioneers of development economics built substantial portions of their theories—the “big push” and “vicious circle and balanced growth,” respectively—on the dynamic external economies, an integral part of the vision of self-sustaining growth, as described in Young (1928).

When I was studying the history of economic thought at the University of Melbourne in 1959 I was extremely fortunate to have Graham Tucker as my tutor. Tucker was Reader in Economic History in Melbourne during the second half of the 1960s and then became Professor at the Australian National University in Canberra. Taciturn, understated, and droll, Tucker was a wonderful teacher who inspired a deep interest in the history of economics in all those who came under his influence. He was responsible for provoking my interest in Herbert Somerton Foxwell, although at the time it was more one of curiosity about a man who was in many ways an enigma.