History of Economic Analysis

Description

At the time of his death in 1950, Joseph Schumpeter--one of the great economists of the first half of the 20th century--was working on his monumental History of Economic Analysis. A complete history of efforts to understand the subject of economics from ancient Greece to the present, this book is an important contribution to the history of ideas as well as to economics. Although never fully completed, it has gained recognition as a modern classic due to its broad scope and original examination of significant historical events. Complete with a new introduction by Mark Perlman, who outlines the structure of the book and puts Schumpeters work into current perspective, History of Economic Analysis remains a reflection of Schumpeters diverse interests in history, philosophy, sociology, and psychology. Major topics include the techniques of economic analysis, contemporaneous developments in other sciences, and the sociology of economics; economic writings from Plato and Aristotle up through the time of Adam Smith, including the medieval scholastics and natural-law philosophers; the work of Malthus, Mill, Ricardo, Marx, and the important European economists; the history, sociology, psychology, and economics of the period 1879-1914; and modern economic developments. Schumpeter perceived economics as a human science, and this lucid and insightful volume reflects that perception, creating a work that is of major importance to the history of economics.

Table of Contents

Introduction by Mark Perlman
Editor's Introduction
PART I
INTRODUCTION
SCOPE AND METHOD
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION AND PLAN
1. Plan of the Book
2. Why Do We Study the History of Economics?
3. But Is Economics a Science?
CHAPTER 2. INTERLUDE I: THE TECHNIQUES OF ECONOMIC ANALYSIS
1. Economic History
2. Statistics
3. 'Theory'
4. Economic Sociology
5. Political Economy
6. Applied Fields
CHAPTER 3. INTERLUDE II: CONTEMPORANEOUS DEVELOPMENTS IN OTHER SCIENCES
1. Economics and Sociology
2. Logic and Psychology
3. Economics and Philosophy
CHAPTER 4. THE SOCIOLOGY OF ECONOMICS
1. Is the History of Economics a History of Ideologies?
PART II
FROM THE BEGINNINGS TO THE FIRST CLASSICAL SITUATION
(TO ABOUT 1790)
CHAPTER 1. GRAECO-ROMAN ECONOMICS
1. Plan of the Part
2. From the Beginnings to Plato
3. Aristotle's Analytic Performance
4. On the Origin of the State, Private Property, and Slavery
5. Aristotle's 'Pure' Economics
6. Greek Philosophy
7. The Contribution of the Romans
8. Early Christian Thought
CHAPTER 2. THE SCHOLASTIC DOCTORS AND THE PHILOSOPHERS OF NATURAL LAW
1. The Great Gap
2. Feudalism and Scholasticism
3. Scholasticism and Capitalism
4. Scholastic Sociology and Economics
5. The Concept of Natural Law
6. The Philosophers of Natural Law: Natural-Law Analysis in the Seventeenth Century
7. The Philosophers of Natural Law: Natural-Law Analysis in the Eighteenth Century and After
CHAPTER 3. THE CONSULTANT ADMINISTRATORS AND THE PAMPHLETEERS
1. More Facts from Social History
2. The Economic Literature of the Period
3. Sixteenth-Century Systems
4. The Systems, 1600-1776
5. Quasi-Systems
6. Public Finance Once More
7. Notes on Utopias
CHAPTER 4. THE ECONOMETRICIANS AND TURCOT
1. Political Arithmetick
2. Boisguillebert and Cantillon
3. The Physiocrats
4. Turgot
CHAPTER 5. POPULATION, RETURNS, WAGES, AND EMPLOYMENT
1. The Principle of Population
2. Increasing and Decreasing Returns and the Theory of Rent
3. Wages
4. Unemployment and the 'State of the Poor'
CHAPTER 6. VALUE AND MONEY
1. Real Analysis and Monetary Analysis
2. Fundamentals
3. Digression on Value
4. The Quantity Theory
5. Credit and Banking
6. Capital, Savings, Investment
7. Interest
CHAPTER 7. THE 'MERCANTILIST' LITERATURE
1. Interpretation of the 'Mercantilist' Literature
2. Export Monopolism
3. Exchange Control
4. The Balance of Trade
5. Analytic Progress from the Last Quarter of the Seventeenth Century: Josiah Child to Adam Smith
PART III
FROM 1790 TO 1870
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION AND PLAN
1. Coverage
2. Paraphernalia
3. Plan of the Part
4. Concerning the Marxist System
CHAPTER 2. SOCIO-POLITICAL BACKGROUNDS
1. Economic Development
2. Free Trade and Foreign Relations
3. Domestic Policy and Sozialpolitik
4. Gladstonian Finance
5. Gold
CHAPTER 3. THE INTELLECTUAL SCENERY
1. The Zeitgeist of the Period and Its Philosophy
2. Romanticism and Historiography
3. Sociology and Poitical Science: Environmentalism
4. Evolutionism
5. Psychology and Logic
6. Pre-Marxian Socialism
CHAPTER 4. REVIEW OF THE TROOPS
1. The Men Who Wrote above Their Time
2. The Ricardians
3. Malthus, Senior, and Some of Those Who Also Ran
4. France
5. Germany
6. Italy
7. United State
8. Factual Work
CHAPTER 5. GENERAL ECONOMICS: A CROSS SECTION
1. J.S. Mill and his Principles. Fawcett and Cairnes
2. Scope and Method: What Economists Thought They Were Doing
3. What Mill's Readers Actually Got
4. The Institutional Frame of the Economic Process
5. The 'Classic' Schema of the Economic Process
6. The 'Classic' Conception of Economic Development
CHAPTER 6. GENERAL ECONOMICS: PURE THEORY
1. Axiomatics, Senior's Four Postulates
2. Value
3. The Theory of International Values
4. Say's Law of Markets
5. Capital
6. The Distributive Shares
CHAPTER 7. MONEY, CREDIT, AND CYCLES
1. England's Problems
2. Fundamentals
3. Gleanings from the Discussions on Inflation and Resumption
4. The Theory of Credit
5. Foreign Exchange and International Gold Movements
6. 'The' Business Cycle
PART IV
FROM 1870 TO 1914 (AND LATER)
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION AND PLAN
1. Coverage
2. Paraphernalia
3. Plan of the Part
CHAPTER 2. BACKGROUND AND PATTERNS
1. Economic Development
2. The Defeat of Liberalism
3. Policies
4. Art and Thought
CHAPTER 3. SOME DEVELOPMENTS IN NEIGHBORING FIELDS
1. History
2. Sociology
3. Psychology
CHAPTER 4. SOZIALPOLITIK AND THE HISTORICAL METHOD
1. Sozialpolitik
2. Historism
CHAPTER 5. THE GENERAL ECONOMICS OF THE PERIOD: MEN AND GROUPS
1. Jevons, Menger, Walras
2. England: The Marshallian Age
3. France
4. Germany and Austria
5. Italy
6. The Netherlands and Scandinavian Countries
7. The United States
8. The Marxists
CHAPTER 6. GENERAL ECONOMICS: ITS CHARACTER AND CONTENTS
1. Outposts
2. The Vision, Enterprise, and Capital
3. The Revolution in the Theory and Value of Distribution
4. Marshall's Attitude and Real Cost
5. Interest, Rent, Wages
6. The Contribution of the Applied Fields
CHAPTER 7. EQUILIBRIUM ANALYSIS
1. Fundamental Unity of the Period's Economic Theory
2. Cournot and the 'Mathematical School': Econometrics
3. The Concept of Equilibrium
4. The Competitive Hypothesis and the Theory of Monopoly
5. The Theory of Planning and of the Socialist Economy
7. The Walrasian Theory of General Equilibrium
8. The Production Function
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER 7
NOTE ON THE THEORY OF UTILITY
1. The Earlier Developments
2. Beginnings of the Modern Development
3. The Connection with Utilitarianism
4. Psychology and the Utility Theory
5. Cardinal Utility
6. Ordinal Utility
7. The Constistency Postulate
8. Welfare Economics
CHAPTER 8. MONEY, CREDIT, AND CYCLES
1. Practical Problems
2. Analytic Work
3. Fundamentals
4. The Value of Money: Index Number Approach
5. The Value of Money: the Equation of Exchange and the 'Quantity Approach'
6. The Value of Money: the Cash Balance and Income Approaches
7. Band Credit and the 'Creation' of Deposits
8. Crises and Cycles: the Monetary Theories
9. Non-Monetary Cycle Analysis
PART V
CONCLUSION
A SKETCH OF MODERN DEVELOPMENTS
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION AND PLAN
1. Plan of the Part
2. The Progress of Theoretical Economics during the Last Twenty-five Years
CHAPTER 2. DEVELOPMENTS STEMMING FROM THE MARSHALL-WICKSELL APPARATUS
1. The Modern Theory of Consumers' Behavior and the 'New' Theory of Production
2. Theory of the Individual Firm and the Monopolistic Competition
CHAPTER 3. ECONOMICS IN THE 'TOTALITARIANISM' COUNTRIES
1. Germany
2. Italy
3. Russia
CHAPTER 4. DYNAMICS AND BUSINESS CYCLE RESEARCH
1. Dynamizing Aggregative Theory: Macrodynamics
2. The Statistical Complement: Econometrics
3. The Interaction of Macrodynamics and Business Cycle Research
CHAPTER 5. KEYNES AND MODERN MACROECONOMICS
1. Comments on the Wider Aspects of Keynes's Work
2. The Analytic Apparatus of the General Theory
3. The Impact of the Keynesian Message
EDITOR'S APPENDIX
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