Description
Book SynopsisProviding an account of the development of economic thought, this book explores the extent to which economic ideas are rooted in moral values.
Adopting an approach rooted in pragmatism', the work explores key questions which have been considered by economists since the classical political economists. These include: what degree of priority ought to be granted to property rights among all individual liberties; whether uncertainties in economic life justify investing political authorities with the power to stabilize business cycles; whether it is better to trust entrepreneurial initiatives to resolve societal dilemmas or to centralize policy-making in the hands of a benevolent government. The chapters argue that economic thought has evolved from an emphasis on sympathy (as defined by Adam Smith) and that there has more recently been a rediscovery of the significance of sympathy reinvented as fair reciprocity in the wake of the emergence of behavioural economics and its co
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1 Introduction CHAPTER 2 Classical Political Economy: The Age of “Sympathy”? CHAPTER 3 Neoclassical Economics: Economics as Pure Science? CHAPTER 4 The Political Economy of “Market Failures” CHAPTER 5 The Birth of Macroeconomics CHAPTER 6 The Political Economy of Government Failures CHAPTER 7 Neoliberalism and Its Discontents CHAPTER 8 The Way Forward
