ABSTRACT
In the present era of excessive intellectual specialization, Dan Fusfeld stands out as an unusually versatile, wide-ranging and erudite economist. His work cannot be neatly compartmentalized, for an incomplete list of his writings and interests includes: the history of economic ideas and policy, economic history (from primitive societies to the modern corporation), labor economics, urban problems, race and the ghetto, and economics education. Like his successful introductory textbook, Economics (1972, 1976),1 his research publications reveal his strong sense of values, and his conception of economics as a normative discipline with a distinctive ideological background and clear policy implications. Never just a cloistered academic, Fusfeld has participated actively in public affairs at the national, state and local levels; and he is an old-fashioned economist in the best sense of that term, since he regards his subject as a means to the improvement of the human condition, rather than simply a ‘good game’, to cite John Hicks’s expression (1979: viii). In this respect, he is at odds with the main thrust of contemporary academic economics.2
