Peter Rona

The natural sciences study objects; the social sciences are concerned with events. Objects have properties, events are the products of human intentionality. Modern economics is built on the assumption that events can be transformed by a process of abstraction into things with properties of the sort that permits the formulation of law-like generalities. These assumptions have resulted in the paradigm of the value-free economic agent. This paper rejects this paradigm and defends the claim that the domestication of the methodology of the natural sciences in economics is a category mistake. Instead, economics should develop a methodology that is proper to its subject.

The Liber Amicorum in honour of Professor Laszlo Zsolnai’s 60th birthday expresses a deep feeling of gratitude towards a colleague, who is a pioneering academic in the field of business and economic ethics. In the introductory chapter you will find an overview of his philosophy, career and publications. What binds together his work and life is a spiritual humanism inspired by Buddhist, Christian and eco-philosophical sources. His disinterested way of ‘doing things’ explains the circle of friendship around his person and work.

The examines whether the euro crisis can be entirely attributed to factors such as regulatory failure or fiscal indiscipline, as opposed to the mechanisms built into the euro itself. It concludes that the euro contains a built-in bias that would result in the divergence of the path taken by the developed members on the one hand and the less developed ones on the other. The original the optimum currency area („OCA”) theory appears to have been valid, and the departure from it, as embodied in the Maastricht Treaty, amounted to an unjustified departure in light of the experience of the five weak countries of the eurozone (PIIGS). These experiences have proved that after the introduction of the common currency overcoming significant differences in initial conditions seems quite difficult. Only the countries having international companies with very strong positions on the world markets could take advantages of the euro, and the disadvantages resulting from the deterioration in competitiv...

The subject matter of the economy is unlike that of the natural sciences. It is the product of human intentionality, and as such, it inherently reflects the human judgment that brought it into being. The fundamental ontological diffence between objects found in nature and objects resulting from human intentionality are explored. The domestication of the techniques employed in the natural sciences cannot produce law-like generalisations in economics with the predictive and explanatory power that characterises the laws of the natural sciences. Modern economics has been most convincing when it has paid attention to the problems caused by the lack of homogeneity in the reality it examines. Studies addressing small, spatially and temporally well defined issues offering a generous supply of empirically verifiable evidence have been more effective in guiding us as to what should be than those aiming for the formation of law-like generalisations of universal applicability.

This concluding paper summarizes the main messages from the book about the restoration of economics as a moral science. It is argued that economics, unlike the natural sciences, does not have an ontologically objective subject, because economic life, unlike matter, is the product of human intentionality. Economic phenomena are always necessarily incommensurate because they occur in historical time and space.

The article examines whether the euro crisis can be entirely attributed to factors such as regulatory failure or fiscal indiscipline, as opposed to the mechanisms built into the euro itself. It concludes that the euro contains a built-in bias that would result in the divergence of the path taken by the developed members on the one hand and the less developed ones on the other. The original the optimum currency area ('OCA') theory appears to have been valid, and the departure from it, as embodied in the Maastricht Treaty, amounted to an unjustified departure in light of the experience of the five weak countries of the eurozone (PIIGS). These experiences have proved that after the introduction of the common currency overcoming significant differences in initial conditions seems quite difficult. Only the countries having international companies with very strong positions on the world markets could take advantages of the euro, and the disadvantages resulting from the deteriorati...