The Ordinary Business of Life

A History of Economics from the Ancient World to the Twenty-First Century
Erscheinungsjahr 2004
ISBN: 978-0-691-11629-7
Verlag: Princeton University Press

Buch, Englisch, 384 Seiten, Format (B × H): 140 mm x 216 mm, Gewicht: 538 g

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's The Worldly Philosophers. It proves that economics has been anything but "the dismal science."

Autoren/Hrsg.

Backhouse, Roger E.

Fachgebiete

• Geowissenschaften Geographie | Raumplanung Geographie: Sachbuch, Reise
• Geowissenschaften Geographie | Raumplanung Geographie: Allgemeines, Karten & Atlanten
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wirtschaftsgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements x

Prologue 1

The History of Economics 1

What is Economics? 3

Viewing the Past through the Lens of the Present 6

The Story Told Here 8
1. The Ancient World 11

Homer and Hesiod 11

Estate Management--Xenophon's Oikonomikos 13

Plato's Ideal State 18

Aristotle on Justice and Exchange 19

Aristotle and the Acquisition of Wealth 22

Rome 25

Conclusions 27
2. The Middle Ages 29

The Decline of Rome 29

Judaism 31

Early Christianity 33

Islam 35

From Charles Martel to the Black Death 39

The Twelfth-Century Renaissance and Economics in the Universities 41

Nicole Oresme and the Theory of Money 47

Conclusions 49
3. The Emergence of the Modern World View--the Sixteenth Century 51

The Renaissance and the Emergence of Modern Science 51

The Reformation 54

The Rise of the European Nation State 56

Mercantilism 57

Machiavelli 59

The School of Salamanca and American Treasure 60

England under the Tudors 62

Economics in the Sixteenth Century 64
4. Science, Politics and Trade in Seventeenth-Century England 66

Background 66

Science and the Scientists of the Royal Society 67

Political Ferment 73

Economic Problems--Dutch Commercial Power and the Crisis of the 1620s 76

The Balance-of-Trade Doctrine 77

The Rate of Interest and the Case for Free Trade 79

The Recoinage Crisis of the 1690s 84

Economics in Seventeenth-Century England 87
5. Absolutism and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century France 89

Problems of the Absolute State 89

Early-Eighteenth-Century Critics of Mercantilism 91

Cantillon on the Nature of Commerce in General 94

The Enlightenment 99

Physiocracy 100

Turgot 104

Economic Thought under the Ancien R?gime 109
6. The Scottish Enlightenment of the Eighteenth Century 110

Background 110

Hutcheson 112

Hume 114

Sir James Steuart 117

Adam Smith 121

Division of Labour and the Market 123

Capital Accumulation 126

Smith and Laissez-Faire 127

Economic Thought at the End of the Eighteenth Century 130
7. Classical Political Economy, 1790-1870 132

From Moral Philosophy to Political Economy 132

Utilitarianism and the Philosophic Radicals 136

Ricardian Economics 137

Alternatives to Ricardian Economics 141

Government Policy and the Role of the State 147

Money 150

John Stuart Mill 153

Karl Marx 156

Conclusions 164
8. The Split between History and Theory in Europe, 1870-1914 166

The Professionalization of Economics 166

Jevons, Walras and Mathematical Economics 167

Economics in Germany and Austria 173

Historical Economics and the Marshallian School in Britain 177

European Economic Theory, 1900-1914 182
9. The Rise of American Economics, 1870-1939 185

US Economics in the Late Nineteenth Century 185

John Bates Clark 187

Mathematical Economics 190

Thorstein Veblen 195

John R. Commons 198

Inter-War Pluralism 201

Inter-War Studies of Competition 202

The Migration of European Academics 207

US Economics in the Mid Twentieth Century 209
10. Money and the Business Cycle, 1898-1939 211

Wicksell's Cumulative Process 211

The Changed Economic Environment 214

Austrian and Swedish Theories of the Business Cycle 217

Britain: From Marshall to Keynes 219

The American Tradition 224

Keynes's General Theory 228

The Keynesian Revolution 232

The Transition from Inter-War to Post-Second World War Macroeconomics 235
11. Econometrics and Mathematical Economics, 1930 to the Present 237

The Mathematization of Economics 237

The Revolution in National-Income Accounting 240

The Econometric Society and the Origins of Modern Econometrics 245

Frisch, Tinbergen and the Cowles Commission 248

The Second World War 252

General-Equilibrium Theory 254

Game Theory 262

The Mathematization of Economics (Again) 265
12. Welfare Economics and Socialism, 1870 to the Present 269

Socialism and Marginalism 269

The St