Description
Book SynopsisThis innovative book offers retrospective assessments of historical ideas and probes controversial issues in economic methodology. The essays are presented under five broad headings. Part I, Economic Discourse and Method consists of three essays that address timely topics in the methodology of economics. Part II, Philosophical/Analytical Issues in Classical Economics, contains two studies of Adam Smith and one of Thomas Malthus. Part III, Money and Banking Issues in the Nineteenth Century contains two essays that evaluate monetary controversies occurring more or less simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic. Part IV, Equilibrium Models/Debates: Walras, Keynes, Pigou is loosely threaded around the theme of equilibrium models - their nature and significance in the works of Walras, Keynes and Pigou. Part V, the final section, The Discovery and Dissemination of Ideas, deals with the discovery and dissemination of ideas in economics.
The volume presents some of the most important recent work in economic methodology and the history of economic thought and will be essential for both economists and libraries specializing in these areas.
Trade Review'Perspectives on the History of Economic Thought
presents a careful selection of the most important and original contributions to the annual proceedings of the History of Economics Society. This series is essential to any serious student of the history of economics and to the collection of any University library supporting research in economic thought.'Table of ContentsPart 1 Economic discourse and method: rhetoric and methodology, Roger E. Backhouse; criteria of scientificity and methodology of the social sciences - Menger, Mises, and Hayek, D. Dufourte and Pierre Garrouste; Kirzner vs. Becker - rationality and mechanisms in economic discourse, Maurice Lagueux. Part 2 Philosophical/analytical issues in classical economics: Adam Smith's critique of the free market economy, spencer J. Pack; the renaissance of Adam Smith in modern theories of international trade, Bruce Elmslie and Antoinette M. James; the great chain of being - a possible source of Malthus's metaphysics, Scot A. Stradley. Part 3 Money and banking issues in the 19th-century: New England's depression-proof free banking system - the viewpoints of Henry Charles Carey and Charles Coquelin, Philippe Nataf; thomas Attwood - crude inflationist or precursor of modern analysis of money and banking?, Sylvie Diatkine. Part 4 Equilibrium models/debates - Walras, Keynes, Pigou: Walras' general equilibrium model, Jan van Daal and Albert Jolink; Keynes, equilibrium, and modern economic analysis, Giovanni Caravale; Keynes vs. Pigou on the economics of war, William J. Barber. Part 5 The discovery and dissemination of ideas: the "discovery" of two-stage least squares, Robert L. Basmann; Japanese modern economics, 1930-1945, Aiko Ikeo.
