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

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 11Estate 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 29Judaism 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 493. 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 ReÂǵime 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 141Government 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 309Economic 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