Pioneers in Economics
46 total works
James Mill (1773–1836), John Rae (1796–1872), Edward West (1782–1828),Thomas Joplin (1790–1847)
by Mark Blaug
However, as this volume demonstrates, these four journalists and pamphleteers were important in pre-empting and encouraging other economists, most especially David Ricardo. John Rae has been accredited with being a forerunner of the Austrian theory of capital. James Mill made the first declaration in English of Say's theory of markets and, quite possibly, Ricardo's Principle of Comparative Advantage. The currency and banking tracts written by Thomas Joplin in the 1820s and 1830s have been arduously mined by a variety of commentators as containing nuggets of later monetary doctrines, and Edward West stated the theory of differential rent before Ricardo, and did so in virtually the same form and language.
This collection does much to rehabilitate these lesser known figures in the history of economic thought.
James Wilson (1805–1860), Issac Butt (1813–1879), T.E. Cliffe Leslie (1827–1882)
by Mark Blaug
This volume is made up of papers published since 1986 and, despite recent events in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, they demonstrate how friends and foes alike are coming to reassess earlier views of Marx. These commentaries made in the 1980s hold out the prospect that a 'new view' of Marx will eventually emerge.
This volume comprises the most important articles and papers published on Keynes since 1981. It includes over 60 articles that are not available in any other similar collection.
The literature on Keynes has accelerated in the last decade and its focus of attention has altered out of all recognition compared to the commentaries of the half century 1931-1981. The picture of Keynes that emerges from the most recent literature is a fundamentalist one, meaning a Keynes who rejected all the basic postulates of orthodox economics, rationality, maximizing behaviour, perfect foresight etc even against his own better judgement. It suggests that there is a constant thread of doubt and scepticism about the very possibility of rational economic calculation running through all Keynes's writings from the very beginning. A coherent philosophical vision coloured absolutely every word that Keynes ever wrote, a vision that declared war against all manifestations of positivism and empiricism.
This set will be an essential source of reference for all economists with an interest in the work of J.M. Keynes and the development of modern macroeconomics.
The Later Mercantilists: Josiah Child (1603–1699) and John Locke (1632–1704)
by Mark Blaug
John Locke, best known for his work on political philosophy, made a major contribution to the debate on the rate of interest in his essay 'Some Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest and Raising the Value of Money' (1692). The central theme of that pamphlet was that the rate of interest, being the price for the hire of money, is determined by the demand for and supply of money, which Parliament is powerless to affect. Locke's other major contribution to economic thought was the so called labour theory of private property contained in the 'Two Treaties on Government' (1690), a classic in the history of political philosophy.
Ramsay McCulloch (1789–1864), Nassau Senior (1790–1864) and Robert Torrens (1780–1864)
by Mark Blaug
McCulloch was Ricardo's most zealous disciple and was perhaps more responsible than anyone for Ricardo's enormous influence, which he propagated through a series of newspaper articles and pamphlets. He was also the originator of much new and important research about the British Economy and his Discourse on the Rise of Political Economy (1824) was virtually the first attempt in any language to project a formal history of Economic Doctrines. Robert Torrens was to produce almost 100 books and pamphlets in a lifespan of 84 years. In his own time he was renowned for his work on banking and currency, but he is also notable for discovering the law of diminishing returns at the same time as Ricardo, Malthus and West. Nassau Senior, twice Drummond Professor of Political Economy at Oxford, made significant, if highly individualistic, contributions to the theories of value, rent, population, money and international trade. Throughout the 1830s he was active as a policy maker on behalf of the Whig Party and served on four Royal Commissions, including the Poor Laws 1834 and the Factory Acts 1837.
This careful selection of articles brings home the central place that these thinkers occupy within English Classical Political Economy.
Pre-Classical Economists Volume III: John Law (1671–1729) and Bernard Mandeville (1660–1733)
by Mark Blaug
In The Fable of the Bees: Private Vices, Public Benefits Bernard Mandeville argued that self-interest was a moral vice. Mandeville's satire was deliberately designed to give offence as if to encourage the re-examination of traditional beliefs : conspicuous consumption of luxury goods, the fashionable display of foreign imports, crime, and even natural disasters like the Fire of London all promote the 'division of labour' (Mandeville's term) and contribute to a brisk trade and fall in unemployment, whereas such supposed virtues as thrift and charity contribute to poverty and stagnation. The Fable of the Bees was widely read in the 18th century and criticized by all the leading thinkers of the day.
Pre-Classical Economists Volume I: Charles Davenant (1656–1714) and William Petty (1623–1687)
by Mark Blaug
William Petty focused on some practical questions of his times including war finance, monetary reform, relief for the poor. His work contains a veritable cornucopia of terms and concepts that came to dominate economic thinking for the next three centuries; 'full employment' and 'ceteris paribus', the idea of national income as identical to national expenditure, public works as a method of dealing with unemployment etc. However his greatest contribution was the invention of what he called 'political arithmetic', the quantitative estimation of both the stock of national wealth and the flow of national income to determine the appropriate base for taxation.
Jacques Turgot was a leading physiocrat, an economic theorist whose Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Riches (1770) was a major influence on Adam Smith, and an early example of the economist as policymaker. The Reflections is a remarkable book containing the concept of the division of labour, the distinction between the market price and the natural equilibrium price of commodities, and the stress on the volume of real savings as the prime determinant of an economy's rate of growth. Turgot was even more insistent than Adam Smith in propounding the notion that least government in economic matters is best government and left no doubt that the forces of the market could be relied on to drive an economy automatically to an equilibrium position.
Ferdinando Galiani was a leading critic of physiocracy and a major 18th century proponent of the subjective theory of value. In 1751 he published 'Della Moneta' which contains some notable chapters on monetary theory, and some brilliant pages on the utility theory of value. James Anderson was a Scottish farmer and a prolific author of tracts on the agricultural development of Scotland and the outstanding policy issues of the last quarter of the 18th century. Dugald Stewart was author of 'Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith LLD' (1793) which is one of the earliest, extended commentaries on the works of Adam Smith by one who knew him well.