A Concise History of Economists' Assumptions about Markets: From Adam Smith to Joseph Schumpeter

by Robert Edward Mitchell

Overview

This open-minded, multidisciplinary approach challenges existing world views on the endogenous and exogenous forces that drive markets and economies.

Nine narrative chapters and a conclusion provide an accessible history of key premises and assumptions in the mental models proposed by several major economists since the 1776 publication of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations and show how—and why—those models and their underlying assumptions have changed over time. The book addresses the legacies of major economists, describes their historical and analytical influence, documents the interaction among various schools of thought as well as how they differ, and the implications that this history has for economics and the policy sciences in the decades ahead.

The author focuses on the mental maps economists have created in an attempt to understand the forces that destroyed "order," explaining how these maps incorporate a non-mathematical presentation of evolving dictionaries, novel analytical perspectives, new evidence, and a reliance on value assumptions. He traces the underlying assumptions, continuities, and differences among major economists including Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo, Alfred Marshall, John Maynard Keynes, Karl Marx, Thorstein Veblen, and Joseph Schumpeter. Readers will grasp how the classic theories still influence economists' mental models today and come away with a basic economic literacy that puts this important social science in historical context. This is essential reading for all the social and policy sciences.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781440833090
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	08/28/2014
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Robert Edward Mitchell, PhD, is a retired Foreign Service officer with the United States Agency for International Development with long-term assignments in Egypt, Yemen, and Guinea-Bissau.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

Part I Mainstream Economics from Adam Smith through Macroeconomics 13

Chapter 1 Adam Smith at the Dawn of Modern Economics 15

Chapter 2 Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo: New Questions and Analytical Advances 31

Chapter 3 Alfred Marshall: Master Synthesizer, Innovator, and a Founding Father of Scientific Economics 47

Chapter 4 John Maynard Keynes and the Rise of Macroeconomics 69

Chapter 5 Where Money Fits In: Money, Credit, and Finance 83

Part II Breaking Out of the Mainstream 95

Chapter 6 Karl Marx's Grand Theory of Political Economy 97

Chapter 7 Thorstein Veblen and Killing the Goose That Laid the Golden Egg 119

Chapter 8 Joseph Schumpeter and the Drivers of Markets and Economies 135

Part III The End of the Beginning 149

Chapter 9 Retrospect and Prospect 151

Notes 155

Index 175