Albert Hirschman (1915–2012) was an economist known for his influential interdisciplinary social science models. In the 1950s, he developed the theory of unbalanced growth, which changed development theory. Hirschman argued that partial effects induced by targeted investments can have positive economic impacts on the development of national economies. In another behavioural model – exit and voice, he explains how dissatisfied individuals can react and how these reactions may affect the quality of output provided in both private and public goods. Hirschman's ideas have been incorporated into many concepts in the social sciences.

John Rogers Commons (1862-1945) was a prominent representative of American institutionalism in the early decades of the 20th century. As a political economist and sociologist, he developed an institutional approach, defining institutions as collective actions which take place within given norms such as law, habits, and customs. Additionally, he introduced the transaction as the smallest unit of interaction in economic theory. Commons' studies of the labour market, the role of law, and his social policy work in legislation made him one of the most influential proponents of old institutional economics.

The population is a strategic resource for any economy, and analysing its medium- and long-term evolution allows for estimating the potential human capital available to the national labor market. Therefore, examining the population’s dynamics and structure—based on census surveys and the identification of sustainability attributes and factors—is crucial for the business environment, the education system, and political decision-makers responsible for public policies that ensure the intelligent use of national resources. Through the comparative analysis of the characteristics of the population from the last four censuses, the paper aims to identify, on the one hand, to what extent this survey allows us to identify and measure the characteristics of the population that have an impact on the supply of human resources for the labor market and, on the other hand part, the main indicators that adjust the provision of labor market needs. Overall, the statistical analysis of socio-economic indicators demonstrates how demographic factors, educational attainment, and economic sectors interplay to shape the dynamics of the labor force. At the same time, demographic aging and increased intergenerational dependence underscore the need for integrated policies to support a demographic model that sustains present and future labor resources. This should be associated with policies that encourage the prolonged presence of the elderly in the labor market and a human development model that will retain young people in Romania.

Nearly 50 years ago, Mark Granovetter initiated a fundamental critique of economic theory. His critique was the starting point for the New Economic Sociology (NES). Particularly, he criticized the emerging theories of New Institutional Economics (NIE), focusing on the ideas of Oliver Williamson (1932–2020) who was one of the most prominent representatives of this school. In this paper we address this critique and Williamson’s response to it. Williamson argued from the perspective of transaction cost economics, while Granovetter focused on the social embeddedness of individuals. The impact of this debate on economics has resulted in an increased research interest in the role of institutions and social networks. However, both lines of thought did not bring economic and sociological theories together. NES established as a subdiscipline in Sociology. Its central concept of embeddedness continued to attract interest but proved to be of little empirical applicability. NIE, on the other hand, has become part of mainstream economics.

Elinor Ostrom changed the way of thinking about common-pool resources in econom-ics. She provided an institutional analysis that shows how groups can find solutions to complex problems for collective goods. Ostrom showed that collective action can work among rational individuals. She and her husband Vincent objected privatization, nation-alization, and centralized government for governing the commons. Instead, they pro-moted polycentric governance as a solution for many common-pool resources. Her ap-proach is known as the Bloomington School of Political Economy, a thriving direction in Public Choice Theory.

This article summarizes the main distinguishing characteristics of the interactions between economic agents in individualistic and collectivist cultures. A brief systematization of the debate in the literature on the relationship between culture and economic development is proposed and the productivity for the economic analysis of a good knowledge of the peculiarities of national cultures is substantiated. The review necessarily includes evidence and arguments for the existence of mechanisms through which deep aspects of culture influence economic performance, e.g., through the formation of beliefs and preferences – as demonstrated by the effects of social capital. Some of the apparent contradictions in the hypotheses presented can be resolved by considering the scope of the group to which the collective identity and perceived shared responsibilities extend. This leads to the main conclusion of the analysis that the kind of collectivism that hinders economic development usually consists in loyalty to a narrow social group.

George Josef Stigler is known as the scientist who strongly influenced the formation of the Chicago School of Economics. He promoted the idea of expanding price theory beyond the boundaries of economics and developed it into a universal model for the analysis of human behaviour, known as the economic approach to human behaviour. His research inspired the Public Choice literature and the Economic Theory of Law. Besides, Stigler made numerous contributions which nowadays are integral parts of economic theory. In this essay we summarize some of Stigler’s outstanding contributions, particularly his work on information economics and the economic theory of regulation.

Edward P. Lazear (1948-2020) is one of the most influential economists in the field of applied Labour Economics in modern time. He founded Personnel Economics, which applies an economic approach to Human Resources. His work linked traditional Labour Economics with the empirical analysis of behaviour in organizations (mostly private enterprises) and labour markets. He revolutionized thinking about Human Resources and integrated this field into economic analysis. His views stand in the tradition of the Chicago School of Economics. Besides his scientific work, Lazear was an influential political adviser. In this survey, we provide a short overview of some of his pathbreaking contributions. These include mandatory retirement, rank-order tournaments, incentive structures, and compensation schemes.

Europe, he strived to keep communication intact between the Eastern and Western blocks through facilitating trade relations in the Cold War. Myrdal is most known for his impact on development theory. He was one of the first economists to address the topics of development, modernization, and integration of the newly set-up states after the Second World War. His development theory rejected the traditional neoclassical approach, which focused mainly on economic growth through capital accumulation and free trade. Instead, Myrdal stressed that reforms in developing countries must structurally transform the whole society and those institutions that hinder development. In Myrdal’s theory a strong state plays a central role in such transformations. Myrdal was also among the first who addressed endogenous problems of development. He (together with Hayek) received the Nobel Memorial Prize for Economics in 1974 for his work in the theory of money and his contributions to institutional analysis.

Although the European business environment induces important premises and assures conditions in determining economic growth and social well-being, the determinant and existent connections between the evolution of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), business demography characteristics and the European socio-economic model have been scarcely studied in recent years. The dimensions of the European socio-economic model design a very specific framework in developing business demography and assuring a favorable environment for future SME development. The main aim of the manuscript is to investigate the evolution of the European SMEs sector and the perspective of business demography evolution to converge with exigencies of the European socio-economic model. In order to argue the research objective, eight specific and representative business demography variables were employed, from 12 European Union member states (EU-MS), during 2009–2017. Further, the SMEs’ performances, determined by changing the economic functional paradigm, were assessed. For proving this, an econometric model was designed considering labor productivity as an endogenous variable. Our preliminary analysis shows considerable differences in business demography indicators and SMEs development among all five socio-economic sub-models of the main European socio-economic model, proving a tight connection between European socio-economic models and SMEs’ performance and arguing the necessity of a paradigm convergence. Within some sub-models, there is clear evidence of clustering and convergence in terms of business demography and SMEs future development.

Harold Hotelling is an influential statistician working in the field of economic theory at the beginning of the 20th century. His contributions to economics are trailblazing and open new topics for economic and business analysis. His best-known work is his solution to the problem of exhaustible resources. He also triggered the exploration of spatial economics and the analysis of product differentiation through his solution of the optimal location of producers in a duopoly. Less known, but important, are his contributions to the development of modern neoclassical microeconomic theory. Hotelling is also one of the scientists who initiated the turn towards mathematical economics in the 1950s. In this paper we provide an introduction of his groundbreaking work on economic theory.

Heinrich von Stackelberg introduced several fundamental concepts to economic theory. His contributions to the analysis of market structure are the best-known ones. Since the 1930th his theory of the instability of markets is a cornerstone of theoretical economics. If firms make dependent and independent decisions in an oligopolistic market structure, the outcome is rarely a stable equilibrium. The concept of Stackelberg-leader and Stackelberg-follower is immanent in many real-world business situations. However, only after the emergence of game theory and linear programming the full potential of Stackelberg’s contributions has become apparent. In cost theory and the theory of monopoly, he provided some of the basic principles that became part of economic textbooks. First-semester students of economics and business administration are studying these theories even 80 years after Stackelberg introduced them. In this comment, we refer to his two major works on market structures and cost theory.

Israel Kirzner has made profound contribu­tions to the theory of entrepreneurship. His con­siderable insights address the entrepreneurial function in the market process. Kirzner belongs to the Austrian school and hence assumes subjective decision-making, incomplete sets of knowledge for all subjects, and market disequi­libria. He ascribes to entrepreneurs the ability to detect through alertness market disequilibria in dynamic competitive markets. Entrepreneurs as arbitrageurs bring markets closer to equilib­ria even if in a dynamic competitive market an equilibrium remains a theoretical utopia. In this short paper, we outline the most important as­pects of Kirzner’s entrepreneurial approach and the function entrepreneurship has in market-driven processes.

This article elaborates on the theoretical contributions of David Ricardo and the way they are introduced in the History of economic thought class. Ricardo's defining ideas in the realm of political economy like the Ricardian rent, the comparative advantage, the specie-flow mechanism, the steady-state, the unified methodology of the labour theory of value, and the natural wage are being discussed in the text in close connection to his lesser known contributions like Ricardo's Ingot Plan, the recommendation to nationalize the Bank of England and his stance in the bullionist controversy, as well as the Ricardian equivalence proposition. The discussion is preceded by a short note on Ricardo's life and work and concludes with an overview of his influence on next generations of economic thinkers.

Frank Knight (1885⎯1972) was an exceptional social scientist and a prolific writer of many reviews and comments on topics in economic theory, philosophy, and ethics. In economics he is best known for his work on uncertainty as a cause for entrepreneurial profit in competitive markets. This is only one of his many contributions that put the market and the price mechanism at center stage. In contrast to many other neoclassical writers, he vehemently criticized the market as a guiding principle to form a society since the market is unethical. Knight considered the economy as a social system and the economic approach as one among many others in social sciences. Knight is a founding father of the Chicago School of Economics. Several of his students became Nobelists.

Mancur Olson (1932-1998) became famous with one great idea: the failure of collective action. Since interest groups provide their members with public (collective) goods with corresponding externalities, he assumed that free riding as a rational individual strategy would be a ubiquitous problem hampering the realization of efficient collective action in the provision of such goods. This remarkable idea – the application of methodological individualism and the assumption of rational individual behavior in the analysis of interest groups, provided a fertile ground for theory building in all social sciences, most notably in political science. In the field of economics, Olson’s ideas contributed to the establishment of the Public Choice Theory and became a prerequisite for fundamental research in experimental economics – on public goods, voluntary contribution mechanisms and games such as the prisoner dilemma. The present paper briefly discusses his two best-known books.

Joan Robinson (1903-1983) is an outstanding Cambridge economist in a variety of aspects. Being a member of the inner circle around Keynes and discussing with him drafts of the „General Theory“ in the early 1930s, she became an ardent defender of Keynes' original ideas. Her first major work is the „Theory of Imperfect Competition“, which became the standard model for depicting real markets as compared to the model of perfect competition. Her work on Marx reintegrated part of his ideas into economic thought while rejecting ideological Marxism. Due to her favoritism of left ideas, her disputes with neoclassical or orthodox economists, and her advocacy of communist regimes after the Second World War, Robinson is also regarded as one of the most controversial economists of her time.

A briefly summary is given of the path-breaking ideas of Gordon Tullock (1922-2014). Tullock can be considered one of the founders of public choice. He initiated a new way of thinking and applied rational choice theory to the political and juridical system. His ideas of rent-seeking behavior, majority voting, bureaucratic inefficiency, constitutional design, and the transfer of the public good problem to political decisions have become cornerstones of economic thought.

A short summary is made of William Baumols’ contributions to economic theory. Baumol (1922-2017) had a vivid interest in many different areas within the field of economics and substantially improved (in co-authorship) the quality of the research on the theory of environmental economics, industrial organization and entrepreneurship. The focus of the present paper is placed on his work on entrepreneurship. The institutional framework of a society makes its entrepreneurs either productive or unproductive and in some cases even destructive. This logic implies that economic policy can be used in order to make entrepreneurs become productive for a society and thus to induce growth, wealth and development.