A Brief History of Economic Thought: A Review Essay
Alex M. Thomas2019, Artha Vijnana
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Abstract
A review essay of Alessandro Roncaglia’s A Brief History of Economic Thought (2017).
Key takeaways
- Say, Robert Malthus, underconsumption theories, Ricardians (such as Robert Torrens, J. R. McCulloch, and J. S. Mill), marginalist revolution, general economic equilibrium, and recent developments in economics.
- Roncaglia provides useful commentary on subsequent developments in the area via footnotes (for instance, p. 139, n. 14 provides a brief account of economists who developed Marx's thesis of the increasing concentration of financial capital).
- Sraffa's contributions to economics is twofold: a critical evaluation of marginalist economics and the constructive revival of the classical economics of Smith, Ricardo, and Marx (p. 227).
- While he accepted Nassau Senior's theory of abstinence and transformed market prices into theoretical variables, he rejected the marginalist notion of a subjective theory of value (p. 125).
- Since HET introduces the student to classical and marginalist economics, it offers her at least two different ways of understanding the economy.
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