History of Economic Thought

The history of economic thought deals with different thinkers and theories in the subject that became political economy and economics from the ancient world to the present day. It encompasses many disparate schools of economic thought. Greek writers such as the philosopher Aristotle examined ideas about the art of wealth acquisition and questioned whether property is best left in private or public hands. In medieval times, scholars such as Thomas Aquinas argued that it was a moral obligation of businesses to sell goods at a just price.

Scottish philosopher Adam Smith is often cited as the father of modern economics for his treatise The Wealth of Nations (1776). His ideas built upon a considerable body of work from predecessors in the eighteenth century particularly the Physiocrats. His book appeared on the eve of the Industrial Revolution with associated major changes in the economy.

Smith's successors included such classical economists as the Rev. Thomas Malthus, Jean-Baptiste Say, David Ricardo, and John Stuart Mill. They examined ways the landed, capitalist and labouring classes produced and distributed national output and modeled the effects of population and international trade. In London, Karl Marx castigated the capitalist system, which he described as exploitative and alienating. From about 1870, neoclassical economics attempted to erect a positive, mathematical and scientifically grounded field above normative politics.

After the wars of the early twentieth century, John Maynard Keynes led a reaction against what has been described as governmental abstention from economic affairs, advocating interventionist fiscal policy to stimulate economic demand and growth. With a world divided between the capitalist first world, the communist second world, and the poor of the third world, the post-war consensus broke down. Others like Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek warned of The Road to Serfdom and socialism, focusing their theories on what could be achieved through better monetary policy and deregulation.

As Keynesian policies seemed to falter in the 1970s there emerged the so-called New Classical school, with prominent theorists such as Robert Lucas and Edward Prescott. Governmental economic policies from the 1980s were challenged, and development economists like Amartya Sen and information economists like Joseph Stiglitz introduced new ideas to economic thought in the twenty-first century.

Economics
Economies by country
General categories
Microeconomics · Macroeconomics
History of economic thought
Methodology · Heterodox approaches
Technical methods
Mathematical · Econometrics
Experimental · National accounting
Fields and subfields
Behavioral · Cultural · Evolutionary
Growth · Development · History
International · Economic systems
Monetary and Financial economics
Public and Welfare economics
Health · Education · Welfare
Population · Labour · Personnel
Managerial · Computational
Business · Information · Game theory
Industrial organization · Law
Agricultural · Natural resource
Environmental · Ecological
Urban · Rural · Regional · Geography
Lists
Economists · Journals · Publications
Categories · Index · Outline
The economy: concept and history
Business and economics portal

Read more about History Of Economic Thought:  Early Economic Thought, Mercantilists and Nationalism, British Enlightenment, The Circular Flow, Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations, Classical Political Economy, Capitalism and Marx, Neoclassical Thought, Austrian School, Depression and Reconstruction, The "American Way", Monetarism and The Chicago School

Famous quotes containing the words history of, history, economic and/or thought:

    the future is simply nothing at all. Nothing has happened to the present by becoming past except that fresh slices of existence have been added to the total history of the world. The past is thus as real as the present.
    Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887–1971)

    Spain is an overflow of sombreness ... a strong and threatening tide of history meets you at the frontier.
    Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)

    The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.
    Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)

    Men are born to write. The gardener saves every slip, and seed, and peach-stone: his vocation is to be a planter of plants. Not less does the writer attend his affair. Whatever he beholds or experiences, comes to him as a model, and sits for its picture. He counts it all nonsense that they say, that some things are undescribable. He believes that all that can be thought can be written, first or last; and he would report the Holy Ghost, or attempt it.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)