IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-02634035.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Mises and Montaigne: A Comment

Author

Listed:
  • Philipp Bagus
  • David Howden
  • Amadeus Gabriel

    (CERIIM - Centre de Recherche en Intelligence et Innovation Managériales - Excelia Group | La Rochelle Business School, CEREGE [Poitiers, La Rochelle] - Centre de recherche en gestion [EA 1722] - UP - Université de Poitiers = University of Poitiers - ULR - La Rochelle Université)

  • Eva María Carrasco Bañuelos

Abstract

Did Ludwig von Mises err in attributing the idea that “no man profits but by the loss of another†to Michel de Montaigne, as Casto Martín Montero Kuscevic and Marco Antonio del Río Rivera claim? In this brief comment we vindicate Mises's assessment and criticisms of Montaigne by way of three points. First, Mises was indeed correct in christening the belief that the economy can be presented as a zero-sum game as the “Montaigne dogma.†Second, we demonstrate that Montaigne refers not only to involuntary exchanges but also to voluntary ones. Finally, we show that Mises considers cases beyond their strict monetary results and refers to entrepreneurial profits as being primarily psychic in nature. As a result, Mises is able to offer an explanation for why forced transactions create no net benefit, but voluntary ones cannot be interpreted in the same way.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Philipp Bagus & David Howden & Amadeus Gabriel & Eva María Carrasco Bañuelos, 2016. "Mises and Montaigne: A Comment," Post-Print hal-02634035, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02634035
    DOI: 10.1215/00182702-3687331
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul R. Milgrom & Douglass C. North & Barry R. Weingast*, 1990. "The Role Of Institutions In The Revival Of Trade: The Law Merchant, Private Judges, And The Champagne Fairs," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 2(1), pages 1-23, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Janvier D. Nkurunziza, 2005. "Reputation and Credit without Collateral in Africa`s Formal Banking," Economics Series Working Papers WPS/2005-02, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    2. Pyle, William, 2006. "Resolutions, recoveries and relationships: The evolution of payment disputes in Central and Eastern Europe," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 317-337, June.
    3. Minzyuk, Larysa, 2010. "The development of non-monetary means of payment," MPRA Paper 28167, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2010.
    4. Mika Kallioinen, 2017. "Inter‐communal institutions in medieval trade," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 70(4), pages 1131-1152, November.
    5. Sanchez-Pages Santiago & Straub Stéphane, 2010. "The Emergence of Institutions," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-38, September.
    6. Peter Leeson, 2014. "Pirates, prisoners, and preliterates: anarchic context and the private enforcement of law," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 37(3), pages 365-379, June.
    7. Paul L. Robertson, 2006. "Transaction Costs, Trust, and the Structuring of Markets," Discussion Papers Series 342, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    8. Müller, Stephan, 2014. "The evolution of inequality aversion in a simplified game of life," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 219, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.
    9. W. Bentley MacLeod, 2006. "Reputations, Relationships and the Enforcement of Incomplete Contracts," CESifo Working Paper Series 1730, CESifo.
    10. J. C. Sharman, 2007. "Rationalist and Constructivist Perspectives on Reputation," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 55(1), pages 20-37, March.
    11. Campos, Jose Edgardo & Lien, Donald & DEC, 1994. "Institutions and the East Asian miracle : asymmetric information, rent - seeking, and the deliberation council," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1321, The World Bank.
    12. Beckmann, Volker & Boger, Silke, 2004. "Courts and contract enforcement in transition agriculture: theory and evidence from Poland," Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 31(2-3), pages 251-263, December.
    13. Kathryn M.E. Dominguez, 1993. "The Role of International Organizations in the Bretton Woods System," NBER Chapters, in: A Retrospective on the Bretton Woods System: Lessons for International Monetary Reform, pages 357-404, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Kenju Kamei & Smriti Sharma & Matthew J. Walker, 2023. "Sanction Enforcement among Third Parties:New Experimental Evidence from Two Societies," Keio-IES Discussion Paper Series 2023-010, Institute for Economics Studies, Keio University.
    15. Bo Rothstein, 2011. "Can markets be expected to prevent themselves from self‐destruction?," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 5(4), pages 387-404, December.
    16. Woodruff, Christopher, 1998. "Contract enforcement and trade liberalization in Mexico's footwear industry," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 26(6), pages 979-991, June.
    17. Ray Ball, 2009. "Market and Political/Regulatory Perspectives on the Recent Accounting Scandals," Journal of Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 47(2), pages 277-323, May.
    18. Joel Mokyr & Guido Tabellini, 2024. "Social organizations and political institutions: why China and Europe diverged," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 91(362), pages 347-382, April.
    19. Volckart, Oliver, 2008. "‘The big problem of the petty coins’, and how it could be solved in the late Middle Ages," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 22310, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    20. Peter T. Leeson, 2008. "How Important is State Enforcement for Trade?," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 10(1), pages 61-89.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • B1 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought through 1925
    • B13 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought through 1925 - - - Neoclassical through 1925 (Austrian, Marshallian, Walrasian, Wicksellian)
    • B3 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought: Individuals
    • B31 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought: Individuals - - - Individuals

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02634035. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.