Mark Blaug - Böcker

An introduction to Keynesian economics and a study of the influence of Keynes' ideas on economic theory and economic policy through conversations with eight leading economists, including several Nobel prizewinners. It has been fifty years since Keynes published his controversial book, The General Theory of Employment (1936) and yet he remains a controversial figure to this day, attacked and criticised from both left and right, as this book amply demonstrates.

The economics of the Arts is a new field with a small but rapidly-growing literature, which has emerged in recent years out of the eagerness of economists to apply their techniques to hitherto untried areas and the recognition by Arts administrators of the rapidly increasing economic pressures on the Arts. This book of readings is the first of its kind. Of the 16 articles, 8 are directly concerned with the Arts in America; the other 8 deal with the British scene. What can economics say about so non-economic a subject as the Arts? Obviously, finance for the Arts involves economic considerations. But in addition, economics provides, among other things, a logic of rational choice, and the economists' style of thinking, therefore, is adaptable to any problem of choice in respect of any set of goals, whether they be economic goals or not. Then, there is the question of whether economics can provide a case for public support for the Arts, that is, whether the State should subsidize the Arts. This is a familiar problem in the economics of welfare but its application to the Arts raises novel questions and even economists are not agreed on whether economics can provide such a rationale. Also, there is the question of criteria for public expenditure on the Arts, assuming that the case for some public expenditure has been made. Can economists tell us how much the State should spend on the Arts? Surely, they can help us with a host of other questions: should museums and galleries charge fees; should museums ever sell off parts of their collections; can the Arts economize on their expenditures; how can modern music be most effectively encouraged by public funds; are ticket prices an important element in the demand for the Arts; and does the low pay of artists discourage individuals from taking up artistic occupations?

The economics of the Arts is a new field with a small but rapidly-growing literature, which has emerged in recent years out of the eagerness of economists to apply their techniques to hitherto untried areas and the recognition by Arts administrators of the rapidly increasing economic pressures on the Arts. This book of readings is the first of its kind. Of the 16 articles, 8 are directly concerned with the Arts in America; the other 8 deal with the British scene. What can economics say about so non-economic a subject as the Arts? Obviously, finance for the Arts involves economic considerations. But in addition, economics provides, among other things, a logic of rational choice, and the economists' style of thinking, therefore, is adaptable to any problem of choice in respect of any set of goals, whether they be economic goals or not. Then, there is the question of whether economics can provide a case for public support for the Arts, that is, whether the State should subsidize the Arts. This is a familiar problem in the economics of welfare but its application to the Arts raises novel questions and even economists are not agreed on whether economics can provide such a rationale. Also, there is the question of criteria for public expenditure on the Arts, assuming that the case for some public expenditure has been made. Can economists tell us how much the State should spend on the Arts? Surely, they can help us with a host of other questions: should museums and galleries charge fees; should museums ever sell off parts of their collections; can the Arts economize on their expenditures; how can modern music be most effectively encouraged by public funds; are ticket prices an important element in the demand for the Arts; and does the low pay of artists discourage individuals from taking up artistic occupations?

First published in 2005. By focusing on planning this Year Book follows a tradition well established in Comparative Education. This year book hopes that by drawing together into one volume contributions from many distinguished specialists, it hopes to help in the necessary organization and systematization of a field which is full of promise.

First Published in 2005, In this World Year Book new ground is broken by concentrating on an aspect and type of education which has been, until recent years, largely ignored by academic educationists. 'The needs of technological and industrializing societies impose the necessity for matching educational output with professional manpower requirements', written in the Introduction to the 1967 volume on 'Educational Planning'. This looks at the education and training provided by enterprises, having regard to the economic and educational histories of the countries concerned, but endeavouring to bear in mind the philosophical and theoretical questions raised. The authors in this 1968 World Year Book of Education show that there are unifying themes in analyses of educational growth in both the developing and industrially advanced nations.

First published in 1968, in this World Year Book new ground is broken by concentrating on an aspect and type of education which has been, until recent years, largely ignored by academic educationists. 'The needs of technological and industrializing societies impose the necessity for matching educational output with professional manpower requirements', written in the Introduction to the 1967 volume on 'Educational Planning'. This looks at the education and training provided by enterprises, having regard to the economic and educational histories of the countries concerned, but endeavouring to bear in mind the philosophical and theoretical questions raised. The authors in this 1968 World Year Book of Education show that there are unifying themes in analyses of educational growth in both the developing and industrially advanced nations.

First published in 2005. By focusing on planning this Year Book follows a tradition well established in Comparative Education. This year book hopes that by drawing together into one volume contributions from many distinguished specialists, it hopes to help in the necessary organization and systematization of a field which is full of promise.

This book is an examination of the nature of economic explanation. The opening chapters introduce current thinking in the philosophy of science and review the literature on methodology. Professor Blaug then turns to the troublesome question of the logical status of welfare economics, giving the reader an understanding of the outstanding issues in the methodology of economics. This is followed by a series of case studies of leading economic controversies, which shows how controversies in economics may be illuminated by paying attention to questions of methodology. A final chapter draws the strands together and gives the author's view of what is wrong with modern economics. This book is a revised and updated edition of a classic work on the methodology of economics, in which Professor Blaug develops his discussion of the latest developments in macroeconomics, general equilibrium theory and international trade theory. A new section on the rationality postulate is also added.

This is a history of economic thought from Adam Smith to John Maynard Keynes - but it is a history with a difference. Firstly, it is a history of economic theory, not of economic doctrines, that is, it is consistently focused on theoretical analysis, undiluted by entertaining historical digressions or biological colouring. Secondly, it includes detailed Reader's Guides to nine of the major texts of economics, namely the works of Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Marx, Marshall, Wickstead, Wicksell, Walras and Keynes, in the effort to encourage students to become acquainted at first hand with the writings of all the great economists. This fifth edition, first published in 1997, adds new Reader's Guides to Walras's Elements of Pure Economics (1871-74) and Keynes' General Theory to the previous seven Reader's Guides of other great books in economics. There are significant and major additions to six chapters.

This major reference work, now in its fourth edition, is an extensive and authoritative guide to the most frequently cited academic economists throughout the world.As with the previous editions, each of the entries is written by the entrants themselves and gives pertinent biographical data, principal fields of interest, chief publications and a statement of their principal contributions to economics as they - and not the editors - perceive them. This edition includes only living economists whose articles, published in the period 1990-2000, have been most frequently cited and as such it is the most up-to-date biographical dictionary of the leading players in the economics profession.a thoroughly revised, updated and extended fourth edition containing the most cited economists from 1990-2000the only biographical dictionary of major economists to appear in any languageprovides critical information on over 700 living economistsfive appendices, including indices of principal fields of interest, country of residence, year of birth, current affiliation, and first degree and doctorate.

This is a unique account of the role played by 58 figures and diagrams commonly used in economic theory. These cover a large part of mainstream economic analysis, both microeconomics and macroeconomics and also general equilibrium theory. The authoritative contributors have produced a well-considered and definitive selection including some from empirical research such as the Phillips curve, the Kuznets curve and the Lorenz curve. Almost all of them are still found in contemporary textbooks and research. Each entry presents an accurate and concise record of the history of the figure or diagram, including later developments and any controversy that arose in its development. As a whole, the book highlights how the use of geometric methods has played a central part in the development of economic theory and analysis; as a method of discovery, more commonly as a method of exposition and occasionally as a method of proof of propositions in economic theory and analysis.This highly anticipated book will appeal to theorists in microeconomics or macroeconomics, scholars of economic theory and analysis, as well as students in microeconomics, general equilibrium theory or macroeconomics at the advanced undergraduate or graduate level who want a definitive account of some figure or diagram. Historians of economic thought and methodologists will also find this book an invaluable resource.Contributors: S. Ashok, R.E. Backhouse, W.J. Baumol, M. Blaug, R. Boyer, L. Cameron, J.S. Chipman, A.J. Cohen, J.S. Cramer, J. Creedy, A.V. Deardorff, R.W. Dimand, A. Dixit, R. Dixon, B.C. Eaton, J. Eichberger, N. Erkal, R. Färe, L. Gangadharan, N. Giocoli, Y. Giraud, S. Grosskopf, H. Haller, D.W. Hands, G.C. Harcourt, T.M. Humphrey, R.W. Jones, N. Kakwani, M. Kemp, J.E. King, A.O. Krueger, D. Laidler, C. Lee, R.G. Lipsey, P. Lloyd, F. Maclachlan, R. Middleton, M. Nerlove, Y.-K. Ng, A. Panagariya, P. Rodenburg, R. Rothschild, M. Schneider, H.-l. Shi, A. Skinner, B.J. Spencer, H. Thompson, J. Whalley, R. Williams, W.C. Woo, A.D. Woodland, W. Young

This is a unique account of the role played by 58 figures and diagrams commonly used in economic theory. These cover a large part of mainstream economic analysis, both microeconomics and macroeconomics and also general equilibrium theory. The authoritative contributors have produced a well-considered and definitive selection including some from empirical research such as the Phillips curve, the Kuznets curve and the Lorenz curve. Almost all of them are still found in contemporary textbooks and research. Each entry presents an accurate and concise record of the history of the figure or diagram, including later developments and any controversy that arose in its development. As a whole, the book highlights how the use of geometric methods has played a central part in the development of economic theory and analysis; as a method of discovery, more commonly as a method of exposition and occasionally as a method of proof of propositions in economic theory and analysis.This highly anticipated book will appeal to theorists in microeconomics or macroeconomics, scholars of economic theory and analysis, as well as students in microeconomics, general equilibrium theory or macroeconomics at the advanced undergraduate or graduate level who want a definitive account of some figure or diagram. Historians of economic thought and methodologists will also find this book an invaluable resource.Contributors: S. Ashok, R.E. Backhouse, W.J. Baumol, M. Blaug, R. Boyer, L. Cameron, J.S. Chipman, A.J. Cohen, J.S. Cramer, J. Creedy, A.V. Deardorff, R.W. Dimand, A. Dixit, R. Dixon, B.C. Eaton, J. Eichberger, N. Erkal, R. Färe, L. Gangadharan, N. Giocoli, Y. Giraud, S. Grosskopf, H. Haller, D.W. Hands, G.C. Harcourt, T.M. Humphrey, R.W. Jones, N. Kakwani, M. Kemp, J.E. King, A.O. Krueger, D. Laidler, C. Lee, R.G. Lipsey, P. Lloyd, F. Maclachlan, R. Middleton, M. Nerlove, Y.-K. Ng, A. Panagariya, P. Rodenburg, R. Rothschild, M. Schneider, H.-l. Shi, A. Skinner, B.J. Spencer, H. Thompson, J. Whalley, R. Williams, W.C. Woo, A.D. Woodland, W. Young

The Mercantilist School never presented a common front but is associated with a common outlook: the idea of specie or bullion as the essence of wealth and the notion that a positive balance of trade is an index of national welfare. It is also associated with an emphasis on population growth and low wages, a concern with full employment and the far reaching denial of foreign trade as a source of net gain to the world as a whole; that is, international trade was regarded as a zero-sum gain and particular nations were thought to benefit from international trade only at the expense of others. The underlying idea that a permanent balance of trade surplus should be beneficial to a nation has been a source of discussion right down to the present day.

This volume presents critical writings on the work of the later mercantilists. Sir Josiah Child was elected a governor of the East India Company in 1681. His reputation as an economist rests on his book 'A New Discourse of Trade' published in 1693. His work stimulated a wide range of discussion of such topics as interest rates, population, wage policy, poor relief and colonization. Despite many liberal elements in his thinking, he was a typical Mercantilist in his preference for administrative solutions to economic problems. 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.

Pierre le Pesant Boisguilbert was considered by Marx as one of the founders of classical political economy. His writings contain a large number of concepts and ideas that reappear in the writings of Quesnay, Cantillon and Adam Smith. George Berkeley - a major figure in the history of philosophical idealism - was the author of 'The Querist', a treatise on the nature of Irish under-development and cures for Irish poverty. Baron de Montesquieu - one of the great 18th century polymaths - is author of the masterpiece 'The Spirit of the Laws' (1748) which, while ostensibly a treatise on law, is actually a study of political organization, types of government, national character and the determining ethos of different societies. It enjoyed enormous success in the 18th century and was almost certainly read and studied by Adam Smith. 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.

John Law was one of those extraordinary personalities in which the 18th century seemed to abound. He held a demand-and-supply theory of value and treated the value of money or the determination of the average level of prices as only a special case of a general theory of value. Law eventually became Minister of Finance in France and was responsible for the greatest speculative frenzy in her history known as the Mississippi Bubble. When the boom collapsed in the closing months of 1720, Law was forced to flee France, permanently discredited, and spent his declining years as a professional gambler in Venice.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.

Francois Quesnay is best known for the Tableau Economique, the proposition that only agriculture generates a positive 'net product' and that industry is 'sterile'. He recommended a 'single tax' on ground rent and invented the slogan 'laissez faire, laissez passe'. He was the first to found a school of economists called the 'physiocrats' which enjoyed an immense vogue in France for about a decade in the 1750s. The practical programme of the physiocrats was to eliminate the vestiges of medieval tolls and restrictions in the countryside, to rationalize the fiscal system, to amalgamate small-holdings into large-scale agricultural estates, to free the corn trade from all mercantilist restrictions - in short to emulate England. Placed in its historical context these were eminently reasonable views but the attempt to provide these reforms with a watertight theoretical argument produced some forced reasoning and slightly absurd conclusions.

David Hume is best known for his work on political philosophy. However, he wrote a series of essays on money, population and international trade which must rank among the major economic writings of the 18th century. Certainly they influenced Adam Smith and have a sparkling quality that still makes them worth reading today. His statement of the so-called 'specie-flow mechanism' constituted his answer to the mercantilist concern with the maintenance of a chronic surplus in the balance of payments. He also put forward what is now known as the 'theory of creeping inflation' and advocated the notion that political freedom flows from economic freedom. James Steuart was a British mercantilist, the last in a long line stretching back to the 16th century. He advocated the entire armoury of mercantilist policies: the regulation of foreign trade to induce an inflow of gold, the promotion of industry by inducing cheap raw material imports, protective duties on imported manufactured goods, encouragement of exports, particularly finished goods because they are labour-intensive, control of the size of population by emigration and immigration to keep wages low, all capped by a denial of Hume's argument that an inflow of gold will only raise prices and thus drive gold abroad.

Until comparatively recently, Adam Smith was known mainly as the author of a single book, The Wealth of Nations. Modern scholarship and the greater availability of his other work has thrown new light on Adam Smith suggesting that he was no mere economist but a system builder on a grand scale and, furthermore, a thinker thoroughly steeped in eighteenth century traditions. The breadth and complexity of Smith's thought is reflected in this present volume which surveys the contemporary debate, involving both economists and the wider scholarly community, through some 40 of the outstanding articles published over the last eight years.

Henry Thornton's Inquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Paper Credit of Great Britain (1802) is the repository of much of what is the best and most clear in modern monetary theory. However, it is only in recent years, largely through the efforts of Jacob Viner and Friedrich Hayek, that Thornton's work has been restored to its rightful place within monetary theory. Jeremy Bentham, was an extraordinary exponent of Utilitarianism and a founding father of administrative science, but he published very little on economics and what he did write was so dramatically ahead of its times that while it has proved stimulating to later generations it was virtually unknown in his own times. Similarly, it was Simonde de Sismondi and James Lauderdale, rather than Malthus, who were the true precursors of Keynesian thought. Their ideas and writings were thought incomprehensible and both men were attacked and ridiculed by contemporaries. However, modern economic theory has given them a new significance and coherence, making their writings relevant and comprehensible to economists. Here is a collection of the best of the articles published on these thinkers in the last two decades.

Ricardo's intellectual appeal, both amongst his contemporaries and more recently, rested on his remarkable gift for heroic abstractions: he seized hold of a wide range of significant problems with a simple analytical model and yielded, after a few elementary manipulations, dramatic conclusions of a distinctly practical nature. In short, precisely the art Keynes was to use so successfully. Although his reputation ebbed towards the end of the nineteenth century, he was still being acclaimed by economists as diverse as Marx and Marshall. Ironically, since Sraffa's work revived Ricardo's reputation, this most bourgeois of economists has been brought back into contemporary debate by economists seeking Marx's intellectual mentors. This selection of recent articles reflects the renewal of interest in Ricardo's work.

Jean-Baptiste Say is almost unread today yet he is famous as the originator of Say's law which later economists, most especially Keynes in the General Theory, have paid so much attention to. Yet, this reputation, based as it is upon the discovery of the concept of the entrepreneur as autonomous from the capitalist as well as the law, is misplaced. Say's main importance lies as a disseminator of English classical political economy on the continent and in his attempts to keep alive an emphasis on utility and demand in contrast to the English over emphasis on cost and supply. Nevertheless, he is also of interest for the theoretical discussions which he sparked amongst historians of economic thought. This book is a collection of essays on the work of Say.

Between the death of Ricardo in 1823 and the publication of J.S. Mill's Principles of Political Economy (1848) there flourished a generation of minor but occasionally highly original English economists. Chief amongst these were Ramsay McCulloch, Nassau Senior and Robert Torrens. 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.

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.

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.

George Scrope was a prolific anti-Ricardian Tory economist, Member of Parliament and Fellow of the Royal Society. However, this was a highly eccentric toryism. Scrope opposed the Malthusian theory of population, favoured free trade and agitated for parliamentary reform. Thomas Attwood was the leading monetary crank of his day and was ridiculed for promoting the ideas of a paper standard currency. Although he presented the mammoth Chartist petition to parliament in 1839, even the Chartists would not contemplate his radical and futuristic monetary innovations.What McCulloch was to Ricardo, John Elliot Cairnes was to John Stuart Mill, a faithful disciple who did not always see eye to eye with his master. He has been called the last of the classical economists and the title is well deserved. Edwin Chadwick, a one time secretary to Bentham, was influential during the second quarter of the nineteenth century and much of his work, in particular his contributions to the 'Blue Books' of the period, helped to lay the foundations of the British Welfare State. Although a utilitarian in politics and a Ricardian in economics, he had a view of the problems of externalities which went way beyond anything dreamed of by Ricardo.This series of essays on these four maverick figures vividly conveys the flavour of the English Classical Political Economy in the heyday of the industrial revolution.