ABSTRACT
As Kenneth Galbraith states, it is not possible to understand economics without an awareness of its history. For “ ...economic ideas are always and intimately a product of their own time and place; they cannot be seen apart from the world they interpret” (Galbraith 1987, i). Accordingly, historical events, both current and accumulated, determine the importance attributed to a particular economic theory; if a theory is in conflict with current historical developments, then it is considered obsolete or insignificant, even if it suggests that current events are consistent with the general structure and argument it lays out.
