The ordinary business of life : a history of economics from the ancient world to the twenty-first century

書誌事項

The ordinary business of life : a history of economics from the ancient world to the twenty-first century

Roger E. Backhouse

(Princeton paperbacks)

Princeton University Press, 2004

  • : pbk

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注記

Includes bibliographical references (p. 344-352) and index

内容説明・目次

内容説明

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."

目次

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 Regime 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 State and Social Welfare 271 The Lausanne School 274 The Socialist-Calculation Debate 275 Welfare Economics, 1930-1960 279 Market Failure and Government Failure 282 Conclusions 284 13.Economists and Policy, 1939 to the Present 288 The Expanding Role of the Economics Profession 288 Keynesian Economics and Macroeconomic Planning 290 Inflation and Monetarism 295 The New Classical Macroeconomics 298 Development Economics 301 Conclusions 306 14.Expanding the Discipline, 1960 to the Present 309 Applied Economics 309 Economic Imperialism 311 Heterodox Economics 313 New Concepts and New Techniques 317 Economics in the Twentieth Century 321 Epilogue: Economists and Their History 325 A Note on the Literature 329 References 344 lndex 353

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詳細情報

  • NII書誌ID(NCID)
    BA67805587
  • ISBN
    • 0691116296
  • 出版国コード
    us
  • タイトル言語コード
    eng
  • 本文言語コード
    eng
  • 出版地
    Princeton
  • ページ数/冊数
    ix, 368 p.
  • 大きさ
    21 cm
  • 親書誌ID
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