Course Abstract
The Development of Economic Ideas: How
We Got Here from There
J.M. Keynes
remarked that “Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from
intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.” The
goal of this course is to examine the works of those who have brought the
social science of economics to its current state. On the way we will navigate
between the Scylla of excruciating detail and the Charybdis of overly casual
commentary.
We will
start with “pre-economic” thought (Mercantilism and Physiocracy), then discuss the early
development of Political Economy. Our actors will be Adam Smith, Richard
Malthus, David Ricardo, Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes, all “Big-Thinkers”--
macroeconomists who addressed the dynamics of capitalist economies. We then
turn to the modern libertarian economists (F.A. von Hayek and Milton Friedman),
who bring us full circle back to Adam Smith. Time allowing, we will discuss F.Y
Edgeworth, John Stuart Mill, and Alfred Marshall, who established the formal
foundations of modern microeconomics.
The
seminar will meet from
Information on the course, including instructor’s notes, can be found at www.econseminars.com. Send email to pf@econseminars.com if you have any questions or observations.
Peter Fortune received his B.A. in economics from Indiana University (1967) and his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University (1972). He was a member of the faculties at Harvard (1973-77) and at Tufts University (1977-1995). At Tufts he served as chairman of the economics department. From 1995 until his retirement in 2005 he served as Senior Economist and Advisor to the Director of Research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. He continues to serve as a Visiting Scholar at the Boston Fed. His work has been in the fields of macroeconomics, municipal finance, and financial economics.
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