Economic Thought: A Brief
History
In this concise and strategic history, Heinz D. Kurz
selects major moments in the development of economic ideas to portray the
growth of the field and how economic insights are acquired, lost, and reborn.
His timeline focuses on the dynamic individuals who give old ideas new life and
the historical events that provoke the combination and recombination of
different approaches and theories.
Kurz begins with classical economics in ancient Greece
and concludes with the visionary work of Kenneth J. Arrow and Amartya Sen.
Among many other topics, he explains what Adam Smith meant by an “invisible
hand"; how Karl Marx’s “law of motion” works in capitalist economies; the
roots of Austrian economists' emphasis on the problems of information, incomplete
knowledge, and uncertainty; and John Maynard Keynes’s principle of effective
demand and economic stabilization. A final chapter sums up the major concerns
of economists today and their relation to world events.