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Main description: Der vorliegende Band der Studien zur Entwicklung der ökonomischen Theorie vereinigt die überarbeiteten Referate der 27. Jahrestagung des Dogmenhistorischen Ausschusses, die an der Universität Graz stattfand. Das Leitthema lautete Wissen / The Knowledge Economy. Mit dem Aufkommen der modernen Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien in den 1990er Jahren hat sich die Bedeutung von Wissen als entscheidende Antriebskraft des Produktivitäts- und Wirtschaftswachstums stark erhöht. Informationen und Wissen stellen in modernen Volkswirtschaften ebenso den zentralen Produktionsfaktor dar, wie es für Grund und Boden in der Agrarwirtschaft bzw. physisches Kapital in der Industriegesellschaft zutraf. -- In den acht Beiträgen wird die Bedeutung des gesellschaftlichen Wissens als Quelle für Wohlstand und Wirtschaftswachstum analysiert. Dabei werden die Studien früherer Ökonomen zur Bedeutung von Humankapital und Wissen von Adam Smith über Schumpeter und Hayek ebenso behandelt wie die Beiträge moderner Wachstumsökonomen wie Arrow, Romer und Lucas.

Vorwort; Inhalt; Helge Peukert: Die Wirtschaft in der Bibel; I. Fragestellung; II. Die politische und soziostrukturelle Entwicklung Israels; III. Schöpfung und Arbeit; IV. Die Bedeutung des Ökonomischen im frühen AT; V. Individuelles und kollektives Eigentum, Steuern und Abgaben; VI. Armut und Soziales; VII. Freiheit und Solidarität: Der normative Wirtschaftsstil des AT; VIII. Eschatologie und Opulenz: Der Wirtschaftsstil des NT; IX. Warten und Geduld: Der paulinische Wirtschaftsstil; X. Gegenwart und Zukunft; Abstract: The Economy in the Bible; Literaturverzeichnis

I first visited the United States in September 1980 when I spent two weeks at the New School for Social Research in New York. The main reason was the first personal meeting with Adolph Lowe (1893–1995), with whom I had been in close contact since spring 1977 when I got my PhD in economics from the University of Kiel. Lowe had built up a new department for research on business cycles and international statistical economics at the Kiel Institute of World Economics since April 1926, which soon acquired an international reputation (Hagemann 2021). The group included such outstanding economists as Gerhard Colm, Hans Neisser, Fritz (Frank) Burchardt, and for some years also Wassily Leontief and Jacob Marschak. None of them remained in Germany after the Nazis' rise to power in 1933. Lowe had moved to the Goethe University in Frankfurt in October 1931, where he was dismissed after three semesters. Like many other émigré economists, he first went to Great Britain (Hagemann 2007), where he became an honorary lecturer in economics and political philosophy at the University of Manchester. In summer 1940 he moved further to New York where the Graduate Faculty of the New School had been founded as the "University in Exile" by Alvin Johnson, and Emil Lederer became the founding dean in 1933.1 Thus, in contrast to Colm, Lowe, as well as his lifelong friend Marschak (both were supervisors of Franco Modigliani's New School PhD thesis) and Neisser were not members of the Mayflower generation.

Shortly after World War II growth theory came to occupy a central position in modern economics. Two of the most important early contributions were made by Harrod and Domar. Both aimed to extend Keynes's analysis in the General Theory into the long run by considering under what conditions a growing economy could realize full capacity utilization and full employment. Solow's neoclassical model came into existence as a reaction to the approaches by Harrod and Domar and some problems associated with it, as in particular the enormous instability. Solow saw the main reason for this "knife-edge" problem in the absence of any adjustment mechanism and based his alternative model on substitution between capital and labor in production and flexibility of factor prices. This article focuses on Solow's motivation and the main content of his approach in reaction to Harrod and Domar's impulse. Furthermore, focus is on the reactions by Harrod and Domar et al. as well as on the distinction between two different instability problems, namely, the divergence between the warranted and the natural rates of growth that marked Solow's starting point, and the divergence between the warranted and the actual rates of growth creating a business-cycle problem.