Introduction

Abstract

The history of economic science abounds in examples of the emergence and decline of fashionable trends in economic thought. Basic and paradigmatic attitudes toward the conceptual understanding of an economy, concentrations on specific classes of economic models which are believed to be an optimal reflection of economic reality, or the usage of formal or verbal techniques whose applications are believed to provide new insights into existing paradigms have rarely gained lasting serious attention over the decades. It is this transitoriness which allows to assign many textbooks and monographs to a certain era.