A retrospective of this year’s postings would highlight some of the flaws in accepted economic theory. Many have been flagged up elsewhere: economic theory is not, and never has been, without its severe and knowledgeable critics. However, there are a couple of errors which are fundamental to the study of economics which are not often [...]

The idea of economic man, sometimes given a Latin nomenclature to increase its gravitas, is the real cause of economics’ more recent failures. Forty years ago it was referred to as a nineteenth century idea, as though the study of economics had moved on since that primitive Victorian era. But with Friedman’s shareholder primacy in [...]

Since Adam Smith’s example of the pin factory, economists have never been able to produce a satisfactory theory of the industrial firm. They’ve thought of it as a black box, expressed it as a production function involving such illuminating variables as price and quantity, and they’ve reduced it to the agency relationship falsely claiming managers [...]

Nowhere in British or United States law are directors (and/or managers) of the incorporated limited liability company, claimed to be the agents of shareholders. The principal, for which directors act as agent, is the company itself. And as agents of the company, directors have a legal duty to act in its best interests at all [...]

‘The Rise and Fall of Management’ highlights some issues as of particular importance to the current situation. For instance, the universal adoption of agency theory. Agency is a legal relationship where the agent acts on behalf of the principal who is bound by the agent’s actions, and the agent is bound to act, in his [...]