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More free books @ www.BingEbook.com FIFTY MAJOR ECONOMISTS Fifty Major Economists provides a comprehensive and clear exposition of the ideas of those individuals responsible for shaping the discipline of economics. Numerous examples help to illustrate the key concepts and ideas of these economists. The book covers a wide range of thinkers, spanning several centuries, beginning with Thomas Mun and Adam Smith, and progressing to recent Nobel Prize winners such as Robert Lucas and Amartya Sen. Fifty Major Economists contains brief biographical information about each economist, references to the major works of each figure, guides to further reading and a glossary of economic terms used in the book. Steven Pressman is Professor of Economics and Finance at Monmouth University, New Jersey. He is the author of Interactions in Political Economy: Malvern after ten years, also published by Routledge, Quesnay’s Tableau Économique and Economics and its Discontents (edited with Richard Holt). He also serves as co-editor of the Review of Political Economy. More free books @ www.BingEbook.com KEY CONCEPTS In this series: Fifty Major Philosophers Diane Collinson Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers John Lechte Fifty Key Jewish Thinkers Dahn Cohn-Sherbok Forthcoming: Fifty Key Thinkers in International Relations Martin Griffiths Fifty Contemporary Choreographers Edited by Martha Bremser More free books @ www.BingEbook.com In memory of my mother, Phyllis Pressman (1926–95); a major figure More free books @ www.BingEbook.com More free books @ www.BingEbook.com FIFTY MAJOR ECONOMISTS Steven Pressman London and New York More free books @ www.BingEbook.com First published 1999 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002. © 1999 Steven Pressman All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Pressman, Steven Fifty major economists: a reference guide/Steven Pressman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. 1. Economists—Biography. 2. Economics—History. I. Title. HB76.P74 1999 330’.092’2–dc21 [b] 98–33133 CIP ISBN 0-415-13480-3 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-13481-1 (pbk) SBN 0-203-02472-9 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-20625-8 (Glassbook Format) More free books @ www.BingEbook.com vii CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ix Thomas Mun (1571–1641) 1 William Petty (1623–1687) 4 John Locke (1632–1704) 7 Richard Cantillon (1687?–1734?) 10 François Quesnay (1694–1774) 13 David Hume (1711–76) 17 Adam Smith (1723–90) 20 Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) 26 Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) 29 Robert Owen (1771–1858) 33 David Ricardo (1772–1823) 35 Antoine Augustin Cournot (1801–77) 40 John Stuart Mill (1806–73) 44 Karl Marx (1818–83) 48 Léon Walras (1834–1910) 53 William Stanley Jevons (1835–82) 57 Carl Menger (1840–1921) 60 Alfred Marshall (1842–1924) 64 Francis Ysidro Edgeworth (1845–1926) 69 John Bates Clark (1847–1938) 73 Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923) 77 Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk (1851–1914) 81 Knut Wicksell (1851–1926) 84 Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929) 88 Irving Fisher (1867–1947) 91 Arthur Cecil Pigou (1877–1959) 95 John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) 99 Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950) 105 Piero Sraffa (1898–1983) 109 More free books @ www.BingEbook.com CONTENTS viii Gunnar Myrdal (1898–1987) 112 Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) 116 Simon Kuznets (1901–85) 120 John von Neumann (1903–57) 124 Joan Robinson (1903–83) 128 Jan Tinbergen (1903–) 132 John Hicks (1904–89) 136 Oskar Lange (1904–65) 141 Wassily Leontief (1906–) 145 Nicholas Kaldor (1908–86) 149 John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–) 153 Milton Friedman (1912–) 157 Paul Samuelson (1915–) 162 Franco Modigliani (1918–) 167 James M.Buchanan (1919–) 170 Douglass Cecil North (1920–) 174 Kenneth J.Arrow (1921–) 177 Barbara R.Bergmann (1927–) 181 Gary Becker (1930–) 185 Amartya Sen (1933–) 189 Robert E.Lucas, Jr. (1937–) 193 GLOSSARY 198 More free books @ www.BingEbook.com ix INTRODUCTION “The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.” So wrote John Maynard Keynes at the end of The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. Keynes was pointing out that the key economic issues are generally argued within a context and framework that was developed over many centuries. Not knowing that history results in less informal discussion and also in worse economic policies. History counts not only because, as Santanyana remarked, those who lack a knowledge of history are bound to repeat its mistakes. History also has value for the perspective it bestows. Like other disciplines, economics was not developed in a vacuum. To the contrary, economic ideas were developed by real people who were responding to the important issues of their time. A sense of history is necessary to comprehend this noble function of economics and to understand how great economists of the past responded to the problems of their time. Finally, history is important because, in a sense, history is the arbitrator of what has only fleeting importance and what has lasting interest and significance. Unfortunately, at the end of the twentieth century the majority of the economics profession has come to reject historical pursuits and perspectives. Most economists even look down on those who study economics from an historical perspective. Part of the reason for this is that over the past several decades economists have come to value technique over ideas. Another reason economists ignore history is that they hold an outmoded view of what counts as truth in the social sciences. Believing that we can come to know timeless and universal economic truths, many economists ignore history; past ideas are thought to be either imbedded in current economic knowledge or just plain wrong. Historians of economic thought must also share some of the blame for the demise of their area of specialization. They tend to present their field as a history of dead figures whose ideas have little contemporary importance. Rarely do they explain how studying the great figures from the past can help illuminate current issues, or how it can help us understand how economics might help mitigate important contemporary problems. Even less frequently do they study the ideas of economists who are still alive and who continue to contribute to our knowledge of how economies work. When Alan Jarvis of Routledge approached me about doing a book on the major figures in economics I took his inquiry as an opportunity to remedy this situation, and also to revitalize interest in the long and great history of economic ideas. All the key economic figures from the past are contained in this volume. They are great figures for good reasons. However, history does not end in the distant past; it continues up to the present and it permeates much recent economic thought. Thus, this volume explicitly recognizes the important contributions made by more recent economists. More free books @ www.BingEbook.com [...]... or wasteful spending Tax collections had to be saved so that they were available for national emergencies, such as wars At the same time, the state should not accumulate so much tax revenue that the national supply of capital falls As a compromise, Mun proposed that each year the state accumulate a surplus of taxes over spending that was equal to the annual trade surplus Mun and mercantilism came in... worked for the Royal Mint; his father was a textile trader Mun himself became a merchant early in life, lived in Italy for many years and quickly accumulated a great deal of wealth He later became involved with the East India Company, a large British joint-stock company that traded (primarily) in the Far East In 16 15 Mun was elected to be a Director of the East India Company, and he remained a Director of... exchange for spices) and that this loss of precious metals was hurting the British economy A Discourse of Trade was rather unmercantilist in its orientation Rather than advocating a trade surplus and the accumulation of gold, Mun advanced any and all arguments he could think up to support the East India Company He claimed that nations become wealthy for the same reasons that families become wealthy—by... London was greater than Paris and that London was wealthier than Paris One key assumption in this analysis was that national wealth depended on the population of a nation While this assumption may seem bizarre in an era where poor countries tend to be the most populous and whose populations grow at the fastest rates, this was a reasonable assumption when Petty was writing In seventeenth-century England... (16 64), established Mun as an important early economic thinker What is most noteworthy about England’s Treasure by Forraign Trade is its much broader perspective No longer does Mun try to defend the East India Company; rather he adopts the viewpoint of the nation as a whole He looks at trade in general, rather than trade by the East India Company, and he makes the case that foreign trade enriches a. .. of New Hampshire read and commented on many individual chapters, thereby forcing me to make the ideas of all fifty economists clear to someone who is not cursed by having a Ph.D in x More free books @ www.BingEbook.com INTRODUCTION Economics Special thanks here are due to Tad Langlois, Ivan Pabon, Lynn Van Buren, Flavio Vilela Vieira and Sarah Youngclaus My editors at Routledge—Alan Jarvis and Alison... became an amusing parlor game that I played with many colleagues over the past several years Alas, this parlor game led to little or no consensus On the bright side, there was much heated and enjoyable debate about the most important ideas and figures in the long history of economics I thank my many colleagues who humored me by playing this game, and by so doing, for helping me to think about what... nation whenever it leads to a trade surplus Mun also examines the factors that cause a country to run trade surpluses Finally, Mun advances a set of proposals that British leaders could 1 More free books @ www.BingEbook.com THOMAS MUN implement if they wished to improve the national trade position The trade balance is merely the difference between what a nation exports and what it imports When a nation... method of Francis Bacon—to use observation and experimentation in order to study the natural world and society Petty developed the method of political arithmetic as a result of applying the Royal Society research program to economic phenomena In the preface to his Political Arithmetic, Petty ( [16 71] in Hull 18 99) announced that his goal was to refute popular beliefs and show that England was suffering... hard work I thank Nahid Aslanbeigui, Peter Boettke, Charley Clark, Milton Friedman, John Henry, Sherry Kasper, Mary King, Roger Koppl, Franco Modigliani, Laurence Moss, Douglass North, Susan Pashkoff, Alessandro Roncaglia, Ruth Sample, Mario Seccareccia, John Smithin, Gale Summerfield and Naomi Zack Any errors, of course, remain my responsibility Several of my students at Monmouth University and the University . Leontief (19 06–) 14 5 Nicholas Kaldor (19 08–86) 14 9 John Kenneth Galbraith (19 08–) 15 3 Milton Friedman (19 12–) 15 7 Paul Samuelson (19 15–) 16 2 Franco Modigliani (19 18–) 16 7 James M.Buchanan (19 19–) 17 0 Douglass. ix Thomas Mun (15 71 16 41) 1 William Petty (16 23 16 87) 4 John Locke (16 32 17 04) 7 Richard Cantillon (16 87? 17 34?) 10 François Quesnay (16 94 17 74) 13 David Hume (17 11 76) 17 Adam Smith (17 23–90) 20 Jeremy. 17 0 Douglass Cecil North (19 20–) 17 4 Kenneth J.Arrow (19 21 ) 17 7 Barbara R.Bergmann (19 27–) 18 1 Gary Becker (19 30–) 18 5 Amartya Sen (19 33–) 18 9 Robert E.Lucas, Jr. (19 37–) 19 3 GLOSSARY 19 8 More