Even after the experience of WWII and despite the existence of various institutions such as United Nations to avoid conflict between nations, we have not succeeded in making a world free from war. The Cold War, the Vietnam War, the intervention of the superpowers in local conflicts and the spread of terrorism have made this all too clear.

This volume brings together contributions by leading international scholars of various countries and reconstructs how economists have dealt with issues that have been puzzling them for nearly three centuries: Can a war be 'rational'? Does international commerce complement or substitute war? Who are the real winners and losers of wars? How are military expenses to be funded?

The book offers a refreshing approach to the subject and how we think about the relations between economics and war.

"While Marxists assert ubiquity of economic interest behind war motives, Albert O. Hirschman praised the cooling effect of commercial interest over the warlike passion. In any case, war and peace is one of the most significant themes that has motivated generations of economists for their investigation. What is the economic cause of the war, how to pay the war, what is the condition for the peace? Focusing such topics, historians of economic thought of the West and Japan gathered to offer their investigations into the ideas and deeds of economists that not only contributed the tradition of this discipline but also influenced general political orientations then. In addition to the reflections on the Western and modern economists from 17th to 20th Century, this volume contains three chapters on Japanese economists before World War II: on the trend of new liberalism in interwar years, on the extensions of economic research in higher commercial schools, and peculiar view of a prominent economist (Yasuma Takata, called "A. Marshall in Japan" ) on power and race. In all they render a deep understanding of the intellectual atmosphere of Japan in the years flowing into the war that amalgamated liberalism, pragmatism, and all-embracing supra-racism." - Kiichiro Yagi, Professor Emeritus, Kyoto University; President, Setsunan University "The current volume presents selected papers from the fourth joint conference of JSHET and ESHET, i.e. the Japanese and European Societies for the History of Economic Thought. The meeting took place in Otaru, Hokkaido in September 2015 and focused on "War in the history of economic thought: the economists and the question of war". Unfortunately, this is a topical issue not only due to the centennial of WWI but even more so due to an escalation of resurgent nationalism, ethnic, religious, social and trade conflicts on a global level. The book covers a whole bunch of relevant issues, such as the concept of food weapon, how to pay for the war or price controls in wartime economies, analyzed by distinguished Japanese and European historians of economic thought. It comprises essays from (pre) classical economics via the cultural background of Japanese economists before WWII until the lessons drawn by leading modern economists after WWII. The volume is strongly recommended to all social scientists engaging for an international civil society." - Harald Hagemann, Professor Emeritus of Economic Theory, University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart "Yukihiro Ikeda and Annalisa Rosselli provide a comprehensive view of how economists have studied war from the seventeenth century to the present, or, in other words, between mercantilism and Kenneth Arrow. [?] The choice of authors to be analyzed in this volume is at times surprising; especially if one considers that more relevant economists have been left out (Arthur Cecil Pigou is an example). And yet, in this resides one of the strengths of this volume. In particular, Ikeda and Rosselli and their colleagues show known and less-known analyses of a crucial topic. For this reason alone, their book is definitely a must-read in the literature on war and the history of economic thought." - Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Volume 41, Number 3, September 2019