The monograph is a collection of works published in 2013–2019. The studies included in it are diverse in subject matter, but are built around four key themes: history of ideas, methodology, inequality, economic growth. The first part traces the history of the emergence and subsequent evolution of such important concepts for social science as “dismal science” (T. Carlyle), “the spirit of capitalism” (M. Weber), “extended order” (F. Hayek). The second part, devoted to questions of methodology, discusses the behavioral foundation of modern economic theory (transformation of the Homo oeconomicus model); the methodological, theoretical and historical limitations of the institutional approach associated with the names of D. North and D. Acemoglu are demonstrated; provides a generalized picture of the latest trends - sociological, epistemological, ideological - in the development of modern economic science. The third part examines a range of issues (from measurement to normative) related to such a politically “hot” topic as economic inequality. The last part analyzes various aspects of the economic growth process: the threat of “secular stagnation” (a sharp long-term slowdown in growth rates); the prospect of large-scale technological unemployment (a catastrophic decline in employment under the influence of the Fourth Industrial Revolution); influence on the growth of the aging population. The book also includes a small work written at the start of market reforms (1992), which attempted to predict whether the ideas of liberalism have a chance to take root on Russian soil. The monograph continues the line of analysis presented in the previous collection of the author’s works, “Economic Essays: Methodology, institutions, human capital" (2016).