ABSTRACT
From the ancients to the moderns, questions of economic theory and policy have been an important part of intellectual and public debate, engaging the attention of some of history’s greatest minds. This book brings together readings from more than two thousand years of writings on economic subjects. Through these selections, the reader can see first-hand how the great minds of past grappled with some of the central social and economic issues of their times and, in the process, enhanced our understanding of how economic systems function.
This collection of readings covers the major themes that have preoccupied economic thinkers throughout the ages, including price determination and the underpinnings of the market system, monetary theory and policy, international trade and finance, income distribution, and the appropriate role for government within the economic system. These ideas unfold, develop, and change course over time at the hands of scholars such as Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, François Quesnay, David Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Robert Malthus, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, William Stanley Jevons, Alfred Marshall, Irving Fisher, Thorstein Veblen, John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman, and Paul Samuelson. Each reading has been selected with a view to both enlightening the reader as to the major contributions of the author in question and to giving the reader a broad view of the development of economic thought and analysis over time.
This book will be useful for students, scholars, and lay people with an interest in the history of economic thought and the history of ideas generally.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |141 pages
Pre-Classical Thought
chapter |14 pages
Aristotle (384–322 bc)
chapter |17 pages
St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274)
chapter |16 pages
Thomas Mun (1571–1641)
chapter |13 pages
William Petty (1623–1687)
chapter |22 pages
John Locke (1632–1704)
chapter |20 pages
Richard Cantillon (1680?–1734)
chapter |8 pages
François Quesnay (1694–1774)
chapter |17 pages
Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (1727–1781)
chapter |11 pages
Bernard Mandeville (1670–1733)
part |243 pages
The Classical School
chapter |22 pages
David Hume (1711–1776)
chapter |29 pages
Adam Smith (1723–1790)
chapter |13 pages
Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832)
chapter |16 pages
Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834)
chapter |16 pages
Henry Thornton (1760–1815)
chapter |11 pages
David Ricardo (1772–1823)
chapter |12 pages
Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832)
chapter |37 pages
David Ricardo (1772–1823)
chapter |22 pages
Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834)
chapter |6 pages
James Mill (1773–1836)
chapter |18 pages
Nassau W. Senior (1790–1864)
chapter |38 pages
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)
part |42 pages
The Marxian Challenge
part |151 pages
The Marginal Revolution
chapter |31 pages
William Stanley Jevons (1835–1882)
chapter |20 pages
Carl Menger (1840–1921)
chapter |17 pages
Léon Walras (1834–1910)
chapter |26 pages
Francis Ysidro Edgeworth (1845–1926)
chapter |22 pages
Alfred Marshall (1842–1924)
chapter |32 pages
Eugen Von BÖhm-Bawerk (1851–1914)
part |59 pages
The Development of Macroeconomics
chapter |7 pages
Knut Wicksell (1851–1926)
chapter |28 pages
Irving Fisher (1867–1947)
chapter |22 pages
John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946)
part |50 pages
Institutional Economics
chapter |38 pages
Thorstein B. Veblen (1857–1929)
chapter |10 pages
John R. Commons (1862–1945)
part |68 pages
Post-World War II Economics