This collection of interdisciplinary essays is the first to investigate how images in the history of the natural and physical sciences have been used to shape the history of economic thought. It documents the extent to which scholars have drawn on physical and natural science to ground economic ideas and evaluate the role and importance of metaphors in the structure and content of economic thought. These range from Aristotle's discussion of the division of labor, to Marshall's evocation of population biology, to Hayek's dependence upon evolutionary concepts, and more recently to neoclassical...

This book tells the extraordinary story of the Pinochet regime's economists, known as the Chicago Boys. Following their training as economists at the University of Chicago, they took advantage of the opportunity afforded them by the 1973 military coup to launch the first radical free market strategy implemented in a developing country. The ideological strength of their mission and the military authoritarianism of General Pinochet combined to transform an economy that, following the return to democracy, has stabilized and is now seen as a model for Latin America.

This collection of interdisciplinary essays is the first to investigate how images in the history of the natural and physical sciences have been used to shape the history of economic thought. It documents the extent to which scholars have drawn on physical and natural science to ground economic ideas and evaluate the role and importance of metaphors in the structure and content of economic thought. These range from Aristotle's discussion of the division of labor, to Marshall's evocation of population biology, to Hayek's dependence upon evolutionary concepts, and more recently to neoclassical...

Inspired by recent developments in science studies, Professor Sent offers an innovative type of analysis of the recent history of rational expectations economics. In the course of exploring the multiple dimensions of rational expectations analysis, she focuses on the work of Thomas Sargent, an instrumental pioneer in the development of this school of thought. The treatment aims to illuminate some of the shifting negotiations and alliances that characterize the rise and shift of direction in rational expectations economics.

This book examines and compares the two major traditions of thought that have attempted to incorporate institutions within economics. These are the "Old" (or American) Institutionalist tradition of Veblen, Mitchell, Commons and Ayres, and the "New" Institutionalism that has developed more recently from neoclassical and Austrian sources. The discussion is organized around a set of key problems involving the use of formal or nonformal analytical methods, individualist or holistic approaches, the respective roles of rational choice and rule following behavior, the relative importance of...

This book is a study in the history of economic thought. It deals with the economics of exchange, that is, with prices, wages and interest rates. Those who pay a certain price or interest rate, or work at a certain wage, may agree to do so because they are in economic need. They are thus in a sense compelled and not free to choose. This problem was first discussed by teachers in the medieval universities. This book follows the discussion from the Middle Ages to the present.

This volume examines the development of the ideas of the new Austrian school from its beginnings in Vienna in the 1870s to the present. It focuses primarily in showing how the coherent theme that emerges from the thought of Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig Lachman, Israel Kirzner and a variety of younger Austrians is an examination of the implications of time and ignorance (or processes and knowledge) for economic theory.

It is a commonly held belief that, in 1936, Keynes' General Theory ushered in a new era in economic thought, with faith in the free market being replaced by reliance on systematic government intervention as a means of keeping the economy on an even keel. This book surveys the writings of a large number of economists in the interwar years and argues that the "Keynesian Revolution" is a myth, and that the "new economics" was a careful and selective synthesis of an "old economics" that had been developing for twenty years or more.

Examining the emergence, in the inter-war years, of what came to be called 'Keynesian macroeconomics'.

The Victorian polymath William Stanley Jevons (1835 82) is generally and rightly venerated as one of the great innovators of economic theory and method in what came to be known as the 'marginalist revolution'. This book is an investigation into the cultural and intellectual resources that Jevons drew upon to revolutionize research methods in economics. Jevons's uniform approach to the sciences was based on a firm belief in the mechanical constitution of the universe and a firm conviction that all scientific knowledge was limited and therefore hypothetical in character. Jevons's mechanical...