Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Economic Thought - Topics

Introduction to Economic Thought

Economic Thought Can Be Divided Into Four Broad Categories1:

I. PRECLASSICAL ECONOMIC THOUGHT

Early Preclassical Economic Thought

Greek Thought
Hesiod
Xenophon
Aristotle

Arab-Islamic Thought
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali
Ibn Khaldun

Scholasticism
The Feudal Foundation of Scholastic Thought
St. Thomas Aquinas

Precursors of Classical Economic Thought

Mercantilism
Thomas Mun
Gerard Malynes
Charles Davenant
Jean Baptiste Colbert
Sir William Petty

The Physiocratic School
Francois Quesnay
Anne Robert Jacques Turgot

Other Forerunners
Bernard Mandeville
Sir Dudley North
David Hume
Richard Cantillon

Spanish Economic Thought


II. CLASSICAL ECONOMIC THOUGHT & ITS CRITICS

Adam Smith (1723-1790)
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834)
Population Theory
Theory of Market Gluts

David Ricardo (1772-1823)
Currency Question
Theory of Diminishing Returns and Rent
Theory of Exchange Value and Relative Prices
Distribution of Income
Ricardian Equivalence Theorem
Unemployment

Other Classical Economists
Jeremy Bentham
Jean-Baptiste Say
Nassau William Senior
John Stuart Mill

Socialist Thought
Henri Comte de Saint-Simon
Charles Fourier
Simonde de Sismondi
Robert Owen
Louis Blanc
Charles Kingsley

Karl Marx

German Historical School
Friedrich List
Wilhelm Roscher
Gustav Schmoller
Max Weber

III. NEOCLASSICAL ECONOMIC THOUGHT & ITS CRITICS

Forerunners of the Marginalist School
Antoine Augustin Cournot
Jules Dupuit
Johann Heinrich von Thünen

The Marginalist School
William Stanley Jevons
Carl Menger
Friedrich von Wieser
Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk
Francis Y. Edgeworth
John Bates Clark

The Neoclassical School
Alfred Marshall
Monetary Economics
John Gustav Knut Wicksell
Irving Fisher
Ralph George Hawtrey
Departures from Pure Competition
Piero Sraffa
Edward Hastings Chamberlin
Joan Robinson
Mathematical Economics
Léon Walras
Wassily Leontief
John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern
John R. Hicks

The Institutionalist School
Thorstein Bunde Veblen
Veblen Goods
Upward Sloping Demand Curves
Wesley Clair Mitchell
John Kenneth Galbraith

Welfare Economics
Vilfredo Pareto
Arthur Cecil Pigou
Ludwig von Mises
Oscar Lange
Kenneth Arrow
James M. Buchanan
Amartya Sen

John R. Commons

John A. Hobson

Austrian Economics
Ludwig von Mises

IV. MODERN ECONOMIC THOUGHT & ITS CRITICS

The Keynesian School
John Maynard Keynes
Alvin H. Hansen
Paul A. Samuelson
The Post-Keynesians
The New Keynesians

Economic Growth and Development
Sir Roy F. Harrod
Evsey Domar
Robert M. Solow
Joseph Alois Schumpeter
Ragnar Nurkse
W. Arthur Lewis

The Chicago School & New Classicism
Milton Friedman
Robert E. Lucas, Jr.
Gary Becker


Empirical Analysis

Heterodox Economic Thought
Radicals
Modern Institutionalists
Quasi-Institutionalists
Joseph Schumpeter
Gunnar Myrdal
John Kenneth Galbraith
Neoinstitutionalists
Post-Keynesians
Public Choice Advocates
Austrian Economics

1These categorical divisions follow the convention established in a leading textbook in the field, History of Economic Thought, by Harry Landreth and David C. Colander.