Research Catalog

Title

History of economic thought / Harry Landreth, David C. Colander.

Author

Landreth, Harry,

Publication

Boston : Houghton Mifflin, ©2002.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

Colander, David C.,

Description

xxiii, 511 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

An upper-level text, History of Economic Thought continues to offer a lively, accessible discussion of ideas that have shaped modern economics. The Fourth Edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect recent scholarship and research, as well as a more pointed focus on modern economic thought. The text remains a highly understandable and opinionated--but fair--presentation of the history of economic thought.

Subjects

• History
• Economische theorie
• Economie (algemeen)
• Economic Theory
• Economics (General)
• textbooks
• studieboeken
• economic theory
• economische systemen
• history
• economische theorie
• economics
• geschiedenis
• economic systems
• economie
• Economische filosofie
• Ideengeschichte
• Wirtschaftstheorie
• Geschichte
• Économie politique > Histoire
• Economics > History

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

• 1. INTROD. -- The central focus of modern economic thought ; Divisions of modern economic theory ; Terminology and classification -- Our approach to the history of economic thought ; Relativist and absolutist approaches ; Orthodox and heterodox economist -- The role of heterodox economists ; Defining heterodox ; How dissenting economists influence economic thought and the profession ; Problems of heterodox economists -- The problems of presenting diversity -- Methodological issues ; Economics as an art and as a science ; The importance of empirical verification -- Benefits to be gained from the study of the history of economic thought -- Appendix for Chapter 1 -- The profession of economics and its methodology -- The spread of economic ideas -- The evolution of methodological thought ; The rise of logical positivism ; From logical positivism to falsificationism ; From falsificationism to paradigms ; From paradigms to research programs ; From research programs to sociological and rhetorical approaches to method ; Postrhetorical methodology ; Methodological conculsion -- Pt. I. PRECLASSICAL ECONOMICS -- 2. Early preclassical economic thought -- Important writers -- Some broad generalizations -- Non-western economic thought -- Greek thought ; Hesio and Xenophon ; Aristotle -- Arab-Islamic thought ; Abu Hamid al-Ghazali ; Ibn Khaldum -- Scholasticism ; The feudal foundations of scholastic thought ; St. Thomas Aquinas -- 3. Mercantilism, physiocracy, and other precursors of classical economic thought -- Important writers -- Mercantilism ; Every person his own economist ; Power and wealth ; Balance of trade ; Money and mercantilism ; Modern analysis of mercantilism ; Theoretical contributions of the mercantilists -- Influential precursors of classical thought ; Thomas Mun ; William Petty ; Bernard Mandevill ; David Hume ; Richard Cantillon -- Physiocracy ; Natural law ; The interrelatedness of an economy ; Physiocratic economic policy -- Spanish economic thought -- Pt. II. CLASSICAL ECONOMIC THOUGHT, AND ITS CRITICS -- Important writers ; Classical political economy ; Marx's political economy -- 4. Adam Smith -- The breadth of Adam Smith -- Smith's analysis of markets and policy conclusions ; Contextual economic policy ; Natural order, harmony, and laissez faire ; The working of competitive markets ; Capital and the capitalists ; The impact of Smith on policy -- The nature and causes of the wealth of nations ; Causes of the wealth of nations ; Summary of the causes of the wealth of nation -- International trade -- Value theory ; Relative prices ; The meaning of value ; Smith on relative prices -- Distribution theory ; Wages ; Wages fund doctrine ; Profits ; Rent ; The rate of profit over time -- Welfare and the general level of prices -- 5. Ricardo and Malthus -- David Ricardo , a theorist's theorist ; The period between Smith's wealth of the nations and Ricardo's principles -- The Malthusian population doctrine ; Population theory as an intellectual response to problems of the times ; The population theory ; Controversy about the population theory -- Ricardo : method, policy, scope ; Ricardo's method ; Ricardo and economic policy ; The scope of economics according to Ricardo -- Ricardo's model ; The problem of the times : the corn laws ; Analytical tools and assumptions -- Ricardo's theory of land rent ; Dimminishing returns ; Rent viewed from the product side ; Rent viewed from the cost side ; A more general view of the concept of rent -- Ricardo's value theory ; Ricardo's labor cost theory of value ; Competitively produced goods ; Difficulties of a labor cost theory of value ; Did Ricardo hold a labor theory of value? -- Ricardian distribution theory ; Distribution theory ; Distribution of income over time ; Back to the corn laws -- Comparative advantage ; Absolute advantage ; Comparative advantage ; Ricardo, Smith and the foundations of trade -- Stability and growth in a capitalistic economy ; Mercantilist views of aggragated demand ; Smith's view of aggregated demand ; Malthusian underconsumptionism ; Say's law ; The bullion debates, Henry Thornton, and Ricardo's monetary theory ; Technological unemployment ; Keynes on Malthus and Ricardo -- 6. J.S. Mill and the decline of classical economics -- Post-Ricardian developments ; Early critics of classical economics ; The scope and method of economics ; Malthusian population theory ; Wages fund doctrine ; Historical dimishing returns ; The road not taken : Charles Babbage and increasing returns ; Falling rate of profits ; Theory of Profits (interest) -- J.S. Mill : the background of his thought ; Mill's approach to economics ; Mill's eclecticism ; Heremy Bentham's influence ; Laissez faire, intervention, or socialism? ; A different stationary state ; Mill's social philosophy -- Millian economics ; The role of theory ; Mill on contextual analysis ; Value theory ; International trade theory ; Mill's monetary theory and excess supply : Say's law reconsidered ; The currency and banking schools ; The wages fund : Mill's recantation -- 7. Karl Marx and his critique of classical economics -- An overview of Marx ; Intellectual sources of Marx's ideas ; Marx's theory of history ; A closer look at the dialectic ; Socialism and communism -- Marx's economic theories ; Marx's methodology ; Commodities and classes ; Marx's labor theory of value ; Surplus and exploitation ; Marx's labor theory of value : a summary judgement -- Marx's analysis of capitalism ; The reserve army of the unemployed ; Falling rate of profit ; The origin of business crises ; Cyclically recurring fluctuations ; Disproportionality crises ; The falling rate of profit and business crises ; Business crises : a summary ; The concentration and centralization of capital ; Increasing misery of the proletariat -- Pt. III. NEOCLASSICAL ECONOMIC THOUGHT AND ITS CRITICS -- 8. Jevons, Menger, and the foundations of marginal analysis -- Important writers -- Historical links ; Forerunners of marginal analysis -- Jevons, Menger, and Walras ; A revolution in theory? ; Inadequacies of the classical theory of value ; What is utility? ; Comparisions of utility ; Utility functions ; Utility, demand, and exchange ; The value of factors of production ; Evaluation of Jevons and Menger ; Classical versus the emerging neoclassical theory of value -- Second-generation Austrians ; Friedrich von Wieser ; Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk ; Which way to go? The changing scope and method of economics ; The influence of Jevons, Menger, and Walras on subsequent writers -- 9. The transition to neoclassical economics: marginal analysis extended -- Important writers -- Marginal analysis extended : the second generation -- Marginal productivity theory ; Principles of diminishing returns ; The new and the old ; Product exhaustion ; Wicksell on product exhaustion ; Ethical implications of marginal productivity theory ; Marginal productivity theory criticized -- Profits and interest ; Profit theory ; Captial and interest theory ; The problem of interest ; Böhm-Bawerk's theory of interest ; Fisher on interest ; The problem of interest : a summary -- 10. Alfred Marshall and neoclassical economics -- Marshall's claim to being the father of neoclassicism ; Scope of economics ; Marshall on method ; Understanding the complex : the Marchallian method in action ; The problem with time ; The Marshallian cross ; Marshall on demand ; Consumer's surplus ; Taxes and welfare ; Marshall on supply ; Marshall on distribution ; Quasi-rent ; Stable and unstable equilibrium ; Economic fluctuations, money, and prices -- 11. Walras and general equilibrium theory -- Walras's general equilibrium system ; What is general equilibrium theory? ; Early precursors of general equilibrium theory ; Partial and general equilibrium analysis ; Walras in words ; Walras in retrospect ; Walras, marginal productivity, and the interdependence of the economy ; Walras and Marshall on method ; Walras on policy -- Vilfredo Pareto -- 12. Institutional and historical critics of neoclassical economics -- Important writers -- Methodological controversy ; The older historical school ; The younger historical school ; The historical method in England -- Thorstein Veblen ; Veblen's criticism of neoclassical theory ; Veblen's analysis of capitalism ; The dichotomy ; The leisure class ; The stability and long-run tendencies of capitalism ; Veblen's contribution -- Wesley Clair Mitchell -- John R. Commons ; Commons's legacy ; Commons's economic idea -- John A. Hobson -- 13. Austrian critique of neoclassical economics and the debate about socialism and capitalism -- Important writers -- Defining capitalism and socialism -- The emergence of capitalistic thought -- The evolution of Austrian thought -- The development of socialist economic thought ; Early writing about socialism ; Marx and socialist thought -- The debate concerning economic systems ; The transformation problem debate ; The transition problem debate ; The allocation of resources debate ; Socialism and freedom ; Socialist resource allocation in practice ; Planning and economic theory : an assessment -- Pt. IV. MODERN ECONOMICS AND ITS CRITICS -- The state of modern economics -- The structure of part four -- 14. The development of modern microeconomic theory -- Important writers -- The movement away from Marshallian economics
• The formalist revolution in microeconomics ; The battle over formalist approaches ; Paul Samuelson ; Equilibrium and stability ; Formalists, mathematics, and pedagogy ; Evolving techniques ; Applying models to policy -- Milton Firedman and the Chicago approach to microeconomics -- Problems with modern applied economics -- A comparison of neoclassical and modern microeconomics -- 15. The development of modern macroeconomic thought -- Important writers -- Historical forerunners of modern macroeconomics ; Early work on growth theory ; Schumpeter and growth ; The underconsumptionist arguments ; Quantity theory of money ; Business cycle theory -- Keynesian macroeconomics ; The contextual nature of the general theory ; The rise of the Keynesian multiplier model : 1940-1960 ; Keynesian Policy ; Keynes's philosophical approach to policy -- Modern macroeconomics ; Monetarism ; Problems with IS-LM analysis ; The rise of modern macroeconomics ; The microfoundations of marcroeconomics ; The rise of new classical economics ; New Keynesian economics and coordination failures ; The movement back to growth and supply ; Modern macroeconomics in perspective -- 16. The development of econometrics and empirical methods in economics -- Important writers -- Empirical economics ; Mathematical economics, statistics, and econometrics ; Early empirical work -- Neoclassical economics and empirical analysis ; Henry L. Moore ; Moore's demand curve and the identification problem ; Henry Schultz and independent and dependent variables -- Macroeconomics and empirical analysis ; Jevons's sunspot theory ; Moore's contributions to macroeconomics ; Wesley C. Mitchell : hetrodox empiricist ; Measurement and data collection -- The rise of econometrics ; E.J. Working and the identification problem ; Keynesian theory and macroeconomics ; Ragnar Risch, Jan Tinbergen, and the development of large macroeconoometric models ; Trygve Haavelmo and the probabilistic revolution in econometrics ; The Cowles Commission and the Cowles Commission method -- The fall from scientific grace of macroeconomics -- Bayesian econometrics -- Experimental economists -- 17. The development of modern heterodox economic thought -- Important writers -- Radicals ; Twentieth-century parents of modern radicals ; Contemporary radical econmics -- Modern institutionalists, quasi-institutionalists, and neoinstitutionalists ; Traditional institutionalist followers of Veblen, Mitchel, and Commons -- Quasi-institutionalists ; Joseph Schumpeter ; Gunnar Myrdal ; John Kenneth Galbraith -- Neoinstitutionalists -- Post-Keynesians ; British post-Keynesians ; American post-Keynesians ; The mainstream response to the post-Keynesians -- Public choice advocates -- Austrian economics -- Other heterodox economic groups.

ISBN

• 0618133941
• 9780618133949

LCCN

2001131522

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library