Nuno Ornelas Martins

Universidade Católica Portuguesa | UCP · Centro de Estudos de Gestão e Economia (CEGE)

The marginalist revolution of the late nineteenth century consolidated what Karl Marx and Piero Sraffa called 'vulgar economy', bringing with it an emphasis on a scarcity theory that replaced the classical surplus theory. However, the classical political economy of Adam Smith and David Ricardo has been revived within the Cambridge economic traditio...

Tony Lawson has recently advanced a theory of social positioning, in terms of which various aspects of social reality are conceptualised. A central idea of the theory of social positioning is that social relations are ultimately power relationships, which structure how social phenomena are organised. This article further explores this idea by conce...

In this chapter I draw upon the Cambridge Social Ontology project to provide a basis to reconstruct the economic theory of capital and capitalism. Previous contributions within Cambridge Social Ontology, led by Tony Lawson, have engaged in: (i) a critique of the methodology of mainstream economics; while (ii) presenting an alternative conception of...

The book Cambridge Economics in the Post-Keynesian Era: The Eclipse of Heterodox Traditions, by Ashwani Saith, explains how various approaches to the study of economics at Cambridge, UK, were replaced by mainstream economics, as practiced in leading North American universities. This article reviews the book, while also connecting the narrative prov...

Joan Robinson provided numerous contributions to economic theory, ranging from her earlier approach to imperfect competition to her participation in the Keynesian revolution, which had a significant influence in the Cambridge heterodox wing, and Post-Keynesianism. But towards the end of her life, her rejection of received theories was great enough...

A particularly visible aspect of multidimensional approaches to human development and ecological boundaries has been the elaboration of various types of indicators. But such an activity has often proceeded without much scrutiny of: (i) the theory and philosophy that underpins the multidimensional conception expressed through those indicators; and (...

This chapter provides an overview of Piero Sraffa's contributions to political economy, including his critique of marginalist economic theory, and Sraffa's revival of the standpoint of the classical political economists. The chapter also discusses several interpretations of Sraffa's contributions that appeared in the literature, leading to differen...

This article provides an analysis of The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review. The review places the study of biodiversity at the core of economics, by providing a conception that takes into account human impact in the biosphere, and planetary boundaries. This leads to a theoretical model where the human economy is bounded. Within this co...

Here I shall argue that Pierangelo Garegnani’s surplus equation can help in understanding the relationship between Piero Sraffa’s economic system and Karl Marx’s idea of a tendency for the rate of profits to fall. Garegnani’s surplus equation enables us to understand Marx’s analysis of the composition of capital in the context of Sraffa’s system, i...

In this article, we describe how Louis-Joseph Lebret’s work, propelled by his human-centred spirituality, contributed to the development of an approach aimed at the transformation of social and economic structures, so as to achieve integral human development. We discuss too the connections between Lebret’s legacy and the advancement of Integral Hum...

The connections between Adam Smith and Catholic Social Teaching (CST) raise several questions. The principle of subsidiarity adopted in CST, according to which higher associations should not replace subordinate organizations on what the latter can do, seems to be in line with the idea that governmental intervention in the market sphere should be re...

Ha-Joon Chang argues that there has been a switch in development thinking from a “productionist” view, in which development is conceptualized in terms of the productive structures of the economy, to “neoliberal” and “humanistic” views of development, where in the humanistic view development is studied in terms of its impact on human well-being. Cha...

Adam Smith is usually seen as the founding father of modern economics, interpreted as a science that explains human agency in terms of the pursuit of egoistic self-interest. But a reading of Smith’s writings on moral sentiments shows how critical he was of explanations of society which focus solely on self-interest. When engaging in a critique of t...

Various research projects in economics developed at Cambridge share common philosophical presuppositions, within what can be termed as the Cambridge economic tradition. I argue here that the Cambridge economic tradition can be distinguished from other traditions in terms of its underlying ontology, methodology and ethics, and also in terms of the w...

Tony Lawson has recently provided an original assessment of the notions of process, order and stability in the writings of Thorstein Veblen, in which he attributes to Veblen an ideational conception of order, while also arguing that Veblen changed his views on the causes of stability, which in earlier writings were attributed to institutions and th...

Here, I respond to Ajit Sinha’s comment of my review article of his book A Revolution in Economic Theory: The Economics of Piero Sraffa.

Here I address several questions raised by Ajit Sinha's book A Revolution in Economic Theory: The Economics of Piero Sraffa. I focus on the contribution brought by the book, and the way in which it is positioned against other contributions, especially in what concerns the methodology presupposed in Sraffa's contribution, within what can be termed a...

The capability approach to human development, which has been very influential within the United Nations Development Programme, has been instrumental in bringing out an emphasis on final goals of development connected to the expansion of human freedom. Because these final goals are also seen as means for further development, there is a tendency to n...

In this article I address the question of whether corporations should be considered as part of the basic structure of society as defined in Rawls’s Theory of Justice. To do so, it becomes necessary to understand which institutions are crucial for defining Rawls’s basic structure of society. I will argue that a social ontology aimed at understanding...

Here I provide some further elaborations on the idea of a classical circular economy and its articulation with the capabilities approach. This enables addressing some important questions raised by Yoann Verger (2017) when commenting on the idea of a classical circular economy as outlined in Martins (2016) while advancing the basis for a Sraffian ec...

In this article I draw upon the social ontologies developed by John Searle, Roy Bhaskar, Margaret Archer and Tony Lawson in order to distinguish between power and leadership. To do so, I distinguish the different organizing principles behind natural phenomena, collective phenomena and institutional phenomena, and argue that an understanding of thos...

In this article I explore the spatial dimension of Antonio Gramsci's thinking, which possesses an innovative methodological approach to spatial analysis, within what can be termed an ethnographical or anthropological approach. Such an approach engages in an analysis of an overall form of life in each spatial context, in order to overcome the absenc...

In this article I shall argue that critical ethical naturalism, an ethical position elaborated by Tony Lawson, can help understand Lawson's critique of modern mainstream economics. According to critical ethical naturalism, human action should be concerned with removing obstacles that lie in the way of human development and flourishing. The attempt...

Cambridge has witnessed several efforts at a revival of classical political economy, including by Alfred Marshall and Piero Sraffa. Different interpretations of classical political economy emerged in these various stages, all of which contributed to the construction of a Cambridge economic tradition, which became established with Marshall, and was...

The Cambridge controversies about the theory of capital were ultimately underpinned by a clash between two different visions of capitalism, the neoclassical view, according to which distribution depends on the supply and demand curves of capital and labor, and the post Keynesian view, according to which distribution depends on political and institu...

In this article I argue that notions such as ecosystem services and strong sustainability can be best understood and developed within the theoretical framework advanced by the classical political economists, in which a circular conception of the economy is provided. I also argue that the development of notions such as ecosystem services and strong...

The global financial crisis revealed the weaknesses of the EU integration process, in general, and of the Eurozone, in particular. The EU institutions responded to the crisis in an inadequate way, in the belief that government debt stabilisation had to be pursued before the economy recovers. This strategy was based on economic forecasting errors, e...

It has been suggested that economics could benefit greatly from recent developments in evolutionary game theory. In fact, key authors in the study of the role of ethical norms in economic behavior like Amartya Sen argue that evolutionary game theory could contribute much to the study of social norms and behavior. Others have suggested that evolutio...

In this article I compare the approaches to process and order of classical political economy and marginalist economics, taking into account the implicit ontological commitments of each perspective in their explanation of capitalism. I draw on the social ontology developed by Tony Lawson, especially the notion of social positioning. The classical po...

In this article I address the implications of Thomas Piketty's book Capital in the Twenty-First Century for our understanding of inequality and sustainability, drawing upon Amartya Sen's capability approach, and the revival of classical political economy it brings. I argue that Piketty's contribution is a significant one which has the potential to...

Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations is often interpreted as an explanation of the self-regulating nature of the market system, where an “invisible hand” leads to a harmonious coordination of different economic agents' pursuit of self-interest, so that economic development is brought about naturally through th...

In this paper I address some elements in Piero Sraffa's thinking that are connected to his conceptualization of the phases of capitalism. Sraffa describes various stages of capitalism using similar categories to the ones employed in the model of the economy provided in Production of Commodities. This is done by distinguishing the role of population...

Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations is often interpreted as an explanation of the self-regulating nature of the market system, where an “invisible hand” leads to a harmonious coordination of different economic agents’ pursuit of self-interest, so that economic development is brought about naturally through th...

It has recently been suggested that heterodox economics can benefit from an engagement with classical surplus theory. However, caution is often recommended due to the ideological concepts that are embedded in classical political economy. This article argues that many of the ideological concepts that are often attributed to classical political econo...

In this paper I discuss how critical realism in economics can help under-labouring for an alternative economic and social theory. The contributions of the Cambridge tradition in economics, which also influenced critical realism in economics, will prove most useful for developing an alternative economic and social theory. I will argue that while an...

This article addresses Piero Sraffa’s critique of Alfred Marshall’s supply-and-demand framework, and Sraffa’s later book Production of Commodities, taking into account an aspect that has been relatively neglected in the literature, namely the ontology underlying the conceptions of Sraffa and Marshall. This ontological dimension can be best understo...

In his new book The Idea of Justice, Amartya Sen argues that political theory should not consist only in the characterisation of ideal situations of perfect justice. In so doing, Sen is making, within the context of political theory, a similar argument to another he also made in economic theory, when crtiticising what he called the ‘rational fool’...

For most of the twentieth century, a significant share of the Portuguese population migrated to other countries in order to find better job opportunities. However, towards the end of the twentieth century the migration balance sign has changed, with an increase in immigration. In the present chapter we will analyse the relative incidence of exclusi...

The relationship between sustainability economics and the capability approach has recently been explored. Here I shall discuss this relationship, and argue that a study of the ontology underlying the capability approach can help us to see more clearly the interconnections between sustainability economics and the capability approach. In particular,...

Rom Harre criticizes critical realism for ascribing causal powers to social structures, arguing that it is human individuals, and not social structures, that possess causal powers, and that a false conception of structural causation undermines the emancipatory potential of critical realism. I argue that an interpretation of the category of process...

This article addresses the effects of inequality on the globalisation process. It is argued that the recent financial and economic crisis is a manifestation of a tendency of the aggregate demand to fall relatively to aggregate supply, generated by an asymmetric income distribution, which in turn both increases, and is reinforced by, the mobility of...

Hilary Putnam and Vivian Walsh argue that Amartya Sen's contribution can, like the writings of Piero Sraffa, be best interpreted as a revival of classical political economy, in which Sen brings back into economics a richer conception of the human agent, and a moral dimension. Sen criticises the conception of rationality that underpins mainstream mi...

The interaction between neuroscience and economics has gained much prominence recently, leading to the emergence of the new and expanding field of neuroeconomics. I will argue that, although there is much insight to be gained from the interaction between neuroscience and economics, the implications of recent developments in neuroscience and neuroec...

The transformational conception of social activity provides a non-deterministic framework within which evolutionary models of natural selection can be located, and constitutes an alternative to sociological and economic traditions that adopt a deterministic conception of social processes, in which the causal effects of social structures, or technol...

The capability approach to human development, proposed by Amartya Sen and others, is now a prominent perspective within welfare economics and development economics. I argue that the capability approach, like Post Keynesianism, can be situated within the Cambridge economic tradition, a tradition grounded on classical economics, and characterized by...

Mainstream game theory explains cooperation as the outcome of the interaction of agents who permanently pursue their individual goals. Amartya Sen argues instead that cooperation can only be understood by positing a type of rule-following behaviour that can be (and often is) out of phase with the pursuit of individual goals, due to the existence of...

Methodological comments on critical realism in economics have proliferated over the past decade—typically focusing on Tony Lawson's Economics and Reality and Reorienting Economics, which constitute the core of this project. In the present paper we select a series of important, mostly very recent arguments against critical realism in economics and a...

Amartya Sen's capability approach is a perspective that (unlike approaches that focus only on resources or goods) takes into account the heterogeneities between human individuals in the assessment of well-being and advantage. Nevertheless, the recognition of diversity between individuals also poses difficulties to the application of the capability...

Recent advances in cognitive neuroscience research suggest that different preference orderings and choices may emerge depending on which brain circuits are activated. This contradicts the microeconomic postulate that one complete preference ordering provides sufficient information to predict choice and behaviour. Amartya Sen argued before how the e...

Amartya Sen's capability approach is concerned with the evaluation of inequality, and in particular with the description of the space in which equality should be assessed (the space of capabilities, or potential functionings). I will argue that Sen's approach is a philosophical exercise aimed at providing the ground for substantive theorising to pr...

The author argues that Sen's capability approach is primarily a philosophical under-labouring exercise aimed at elaborating certain central economic categories, and that the philosophical and methodological underpinnings of Sen's approach are radically different from those of contemporary welfare economics and mainstream economic practice. Sen's no...

Amartya Sen argues that non-cooperative game theory ultimately fails to explain cooperation. Whilst game theory analysis explains cooperation in terms of the interaction of agents who permanently pursue their individual goals, cooperation can only be understood by positing a type of rule-following behaviour that can be (and often is) out of phase w...