Series:

Pioneers in Economics

46 total works

Cover of Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923)

Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923)

by Mark Blaug

Published 1 January 1992
Part of a series presenting critical appraisals of influential economists from the age of Aristotle to the present. The individuals examined have shaped both the theory and practice of modern economics. Each volume combines classic statements by economists with the most recent research.

Cover of William Whewell (1794–1866), Dionysius Lardner (1793–1859) and Charles Babbage (1792–1871)
The importance of Whewell, Lardner and Babbage to the history of economic thought is as dependent upon the retrospective reading of their work as it is upon their contemporary significance. However, their individual reactions to the industrial and technological revolutions of the early nineteenth century are also of particular interest to us.

William Whewell was known in his own times as a historian and philosopher of science, however, more recently he has been hailed as one of the founders of British mathematical economics. Dionysius Lardner, Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy at University College, London, was both an early railway economist and a precursor of modern theories of profit maximalization. Charles Babbage may legitimately be regarded as the father of the modern computer, yet his most popular book, On the Economics of Machinery and Manufacturers (1832), was an unprecedented study of what we would now call operational research and had a significant effect upon both John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx.

These were the 'also ran' but they are no less important than the forerunners for understanding the development of economic thought in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Cover of Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) and John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)
Thomas Robert Malthus and John Stuart Mill dominated the study of the social sciences in the Nineteenth Century. It was Malthus, not Ricardo or Marx, who was the most famous social scientist of the nineteenth century. This fame rested upon his pamphlet, An Essay on the Principle of Population, whose harsh conclusion caused much contemporary concern. However, the essays published in this volume emphasise the theological, moral and historical orientation of his thought and the more positive attitude towards the masses found within his later writings.

The breadth and sophistication of John Stuart Mill's life and works is no less stunning now than it was in the nineteenth century. Not only an economist, Mill was also a Benthamite, logician, philosopher, political theorist and belle lettrist. Recent scholarship has reinforced our sense of a thinker whose system of thought as a whole is rich, subtle and basically coherent within its own terms.

Cover of Thomas Tooke (1774–1858), Mountifort Longfield (1802–1884) and Richard Jones (1790–1855)
Thomas Tooke was the founder of the contra-quantity theory of money - the view that monetary policy is powerless to influence prices because the supply of money depends on the flow of money expenditure and hence is the result and not the cause of price change. Yet his prominence within economic circles was also derived from his work as a lobbyist for free trade and the principal spokesman of the banking school, arguing against statutory control of the currency.

Long neglected, Mountifort Longfield has now attracted the attention of modern economists who have praised him for, amongst other things, the discovery of the modern factor proportions theory of international trade and a theory of distribution which was a genuine alternative to Ricardo's. Modern readers have been amazed by his Lectures, a path-breaking book which sketches out a subjective theory of value and a marginal productivity theory of distribution - all this in 1834, only 11 years after the death of Ricardo.

Richard Jones was the first institutionalist critic of Ricardo and a historically-minded economist years before the emergence of the British and German Schools. He launched himself into the task of reconstructing the whole of economics on historical and evolutionary grounds. However, not being able to carry this ambitious programme beyond the field of rent theory, and his great reluctance to make unsupported generalizations, caused his work to fall into oblivion. Only recently has modern scholarship begun to reassess his importance.

Cover of Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929)

Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929)

by Mark Blaug

Published 1 January 1992

Cover of St Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274)

St Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274)

by Mark Blaug

Published 1 January 1991
Thomas Aquinas is generally acknowledged to be the greatest theologian of the Middle Ages and his masterpiece, 'Summa Theologica', provides a complete and authoritative statement of medieval economic thought that has remained the official Catholic view right up to the present time.

St Thomas had a decisive influence on economic thought in at least three broad areas: the theory of private property, the theory of the just price and the doctrine of usury. St Thomas's great contribution to economic thought, as to theology, moral philosophy, and politics, lies in his emphasis on ratiocination on the Greek ideal of accepting nothing unless good reasons can be given for it.