While there had been much radical thought before John Stuart Mill, Joseph Persky argues it was Mill, as he moved to the left, who provided the radical wing of liberalism with its first serious analytical foundation, a political economy of progress that still echoes today. A rereading of Mill's mature work suggests his theoretical understanding of accumulation led him to see laissez-faire capitalism as a transitional system. Deeply committed to the egalitarian precepts of the Enlightenment, Mill advocated gradualism and rejected revolutionary expropriation on utilitarian grounds: gradualism,...

Paul Samuelson was at the heart of a revolution in economics. He was "the foremost academic economist of the 20th century," according to the New York Times, and the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Economics. His work transformed the field of economics and helped give it the theoretical and mathematic rigor that increased its influence in business and policy making.
In Founder of Modern Economics, Roger E. Backhouse explores the central importance of Samuelson's personality and social networks to understanding his intellectual development. This is the first of...

Since the marginal revolution of the 1870s, the economic theory of decision-making has been based on the notion of utility. Utility, however, is not measurable. This book reconstructs economists' struggles with issues related to utility measurement from the 1870s to the beginning of behavioral economics in the mid-1980s.

Since the marginal revolution of the 1870s, the economic theory of decision-making has been based on the notion of utility. Utility, however, is not measurable. This book reconstructs economists' struggles with issues related to utility measurement from the 1870s to the beginning of behavioral economics in the mid-1980s.