The Ordinary Business of Life

by Backhouse, Roger E.

• ISBN13: 9780691116297
• ISBN10: 0691116296
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-03-01
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

In some of Western culture's earliest writings, Hesiod defined the basic economic problem as one of scarce resources, a view still held by most economists. Diocletian tried to save the falling Roman Empire with wage and price fixes--a strategy that has not gone entirely out of style. And just as they did in the late nineteenth century, thinkers trained in physics renovated economic inquiry in the late twentieth century. Taking us from Homer to the frontiers of game theory, this book presents an engrossing history of economics, what Alfred Marshall called "the study of mankind in the ordinary business of life." While some regard economics as a modern invention, Roger Backhouse shows that economic ideas were influential even in antiquity--and that the origins of contemporary economic thought can be traced back to the ancients. He reveals the genesis of what we have come to think of as economic theory and shows the remarkable but seldom explored impact of economics, natural science, and philosophy on one another. Along the way, he introduces the fascinating characters who have thought about money and markets, including theologians, philosophers, politicians, lawyers, and poets as well as economists themselves. We learn how some of history's most influential concepts arose from specific times and places: from the Stoic notion of natural law to the mercantilism that rose with the European nation-state; from postwar development economics to the recent experimental and statistical economics made possible by affluence and powerful computers. Vividly written and unprecedented in its integration of ancient and modern economic history, this book is the best history of economics--and among the finest intellectual histories--to be published since Heilbroner'sThe Worldly Philosophers. It proves that economics has been anything but "the dismal science."

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	x
Prologue	1	(210)
The History of Economics	1	(1)
What is Economics	1	(5)
Viewing the Past through the Lens of the Present	6	(2)
The Story Told Here	8	(3)
1 The Ancient World	11	(18)
Homer and Hesiod	11	(2)
Estate Management - Xenophon's Oikonomikos	13	(5)
Plato's Ideal State	18	(1)
Aristotle on Justice and Exchange	19	(3)
Aristotle and the Acquisition of Wealth	22	(3)
Rome	25	(2)
Conclusions	27	(2)
2 The Middle Ages	29	(22)
The Decline of Rome	29	(2)
Judaism	31	(2)
Early Christianity	33	(2)
Islam	35	(4)
From Charles Martel to the Black Death	39	(2)
The Twelfth-Century Renaissance and Economics in the Universities	41	(6)
Nicole Oresme and the Theory of Money	47	(2)
Conclusions	49	(2)
3 The Emergence of the Modern World View - the Sixteenth Century	51	(15)
The Renaissance and the Emergence of Modern Science	51	(3)
The Reformation	54	(2)
The Rise of the European Nation State	56	(1)
Mercantilism	57	(2)
Machiavelli	59	(1)
The School of Salamanca and American Treasure	60	(2)
England under the Tudors	62	(2)
Economics in the Sixteenth Century	64	(2)
4 Science, Politics and Trade in Seventeenth-Century England	66	(23)
Background	66	(1)
Science and the Scientists of the Royal Society	67	(6)
Political Ferment	73	(3)
Economic Problems - Dutch Commercial Power and the Crisis of the 1620's	76	(1)
The Balance-of-Trade Doctrine	77	(2)
The Rate of Interest and the Case for Free Trade	79	(5)
The Recoinage Crisis of the 1690's	84	(3)
Economics in Seventeenth-Century England	87	(2)
5 Absolutism and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century France	89	(21)
Problems of the Absolute State	89	(2)
Early-Eighteenth-Century Critics of Mercantilism	91	(3)
Cantillon on the Nature of Commerce in General	94	(5)
The Enlightenment	99	(1)
Physiocracy	100	(4)
Turgot	104	(5)
Economic Thought under the Ancien Régime	109	(1)
6 The Scottish Enlightenment of the Eighteenth Century	110	(22)
Background	110	(2)
Hutcheson	112	(2)
Hume	114	(3)
Sir James Steuart	117	(4)
Adam Smith	121	(2)
Division of Labour and the Market	123	(3)
Capital Accumulation	126	(1)
Smith and Laissez-Faire	127	(3)
Economic Thought at the End of the Eighteenth Century	130	(2)
7 Classical Political Economy, 1790-1870	132	(34)
From Moral Philosophy to Political Economy	132	(4)
Utilitarianism and the Philosophic Radicals	136	(1)
Ricardian Economics	137	(4)
Alternatives to Ricardian Economics	141	(6)
Government Policy and the Role of the State	147	(3)
Money	150	(3)
John Stuart Mill	153	(3)
Karl Marx	156	(8)
Conclusions	164	(2)
8 The Split between History and Theory in Europe, 1870-1914	166	(19)
The Professionalization of Economics	166	(1)
Devons, Walras and Mathematical Economics	167	(6)
Economics in Germany and Austria	173	(4)
Historical Economics and the Marshallian School in Britain	177	(5)
European Economic Theory, 1900-1914	182	(3)
9 The Rise of American Economics, 1870-1939	185	(26)
US Economics in the Late Nineteenth Century	185	(2)
John Bates Clark	187	(3)
Mathematical Economics	190	(5)
Thorstein Veblen	195	(3)
John R. Commons	198	(3)
Inter-War Pluralism	201	(1)
Inter-War Studies of Competition	202	(5)
The Migration of European Academics	207	(2)
US Economics in the Mid Twentieth Century	209	(2)
10 Money and the Business Cycle, 1898-1939	211	(26)
Wicksell's Cumulative Process	211	(3)
The Changed Economic Environment	214	(3)
Austrian and Swedish Theories of the Business Cycle	217	(2)
Britain: From Marshall to Keynes	219	(5)
The American Tradition	224	(4)
Keynes's General Theory	228	(4)
The Keynesian Revolution	232	(3)
The Transition from Inter-War to Post-Second World War Macroeconomics	235	(2)
11 Econometrics and Mathematical Economics, 1930 to the Present	237	(32)
The Mathematization of Economics	237	(3)
The Revolution in National-Income Accounting	240	(5)
The Econometric Society and the Origins of Modern Econometrics	245	(3)
Frisch, Tinbergen and the Cowles Commission	248	(4)
The Second World War	252	(2)
General-Equilibrium Theory	254	(8)
Game Theory	262	(3)
The Mathematization of Economics (Again)	265	(4)
12 Welfare Economics and Socialism, 1870 to the Present	269	(19)
Socialism and Marginalism	269	(2)
The State and Social Welfare	271	(3)
The Lausanne School	274	(1)
The Socialist-Calculation Debate	275	(4)
Welfare Economics, 1930-1960	279	(3)
Market Failure and Government Failure	282	(2)
Conclusions	284	(4)
13 Economists and Policy, 1939 to the Present	288	(21)
The Expanding Role of the Economics Profession	288	(2)
Keynesian Economics and Macroeconomic Planning	290	(5)
Inflation and Monetarism	295	(3)
The New Classical Macroeconomics	298	(3)
Development Economics	301	(5)
Conclusions	306	(3)
14 Expanding the Discipline, 1960 to the Present	309	(16)
Applied Economics	309	(2)
Economic Imperialism	311	(2)
Heterodox Economics	313	(4)
New Concepts and New Techniques	317	(4)
Economics in the Twentieth Century	321	(4)
Epilogue: Economists and Their History	325	(4)
A Note on the Literature	329	(15)
References	344	(9)
Index	353