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The aim of this article is s to show that contrary to the common parlance and to the widespread belief that treats small business as “the backbone of the economy”, in the sense of being the prime motor of wealth and prosperity, therefore the underlying logic is what is good for small business will also help government achieves overall economic policy goals, the prevailing dominant idea that formulates and drives the Greek economic policy is quite the opposite. Based on textual analysis, from Greece’s Structural Adjustment Programs, to the various assessment reports, till the latest “Development Plan for the Greek Economy”, we attempt to reveal that the prevailing idea that penetrates the abovementioned texts is that “small is not beautiful”. Specifically, after indicating a policy paradox regarding the limited financial support that Greek small businesses received or expected to receive despite their vital importance to the Greek economy, we expose the “structural impediment” idea. According to the latter the existence of a large share of small business in the Greek economy is being considered as a structural impediment for economic growth and prosperity. The implication is a policy dictum that favours a form of an evolutionary natural selection process, whereby only those establishments successful enough to grow will be able to survive, thus the vast bulk of the remaining small firms will exit the market.

The aim of this paper is to sketch out the idea for a grand theory in development studies as the necessary research field for fruitful historical interdisciplinary, arguing that Mill’s stage theory provides such a powerful theoretical framework able to contextualize, develop, and integrate the multiple, diverse, and middle-range contemporary strands in development studies. Second, an attempt is made to reconstitute Mill’s stages theory of economic development placing it at the center of his political economy. We claim that Mill’s theory of economic development implies that the dialectical relation between knowledge/innovation (human capital) and nature (natural capital) accelerates the course of economic change. In Mill’s analysis, the dialectical relation between knowledge and nature penetrates through culture, which is regarded by Mill as a structural element of each stage of economic development. By highlighting the importance of knowledge in the transition between different stages of economic development, and by proposing a reassessed interpretation of Mill’s stages theory of economic development, we propose that in Mill’s political economy both innovation and nature play a pivotal role in accessing sustainable economic development.

This article challenges some fundamental propositions of property rights theory by revealing the inability of new institutional economics to fully grasp the notion of property, as reflected in its narrow and problematic definition of property rights. The concept of property relations is proposed as better suited to capture the social and institutional aspects of property. By reconsidering the case of the Montagnais, originally used by Alchian and Demsetz for illustrative purposes, and drawing on the works of Polanyi and McManus, we show that the historical explanation of the emergence of (private) property rights provided by Alchian and Demsetz is flawed. JEL Codes: D02, D23, P14

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