Insights for Today's Trying Economic Times

In meeting these current and future challenges politicians, policymakers, and academics have naturally sought the wisdom of eminent economists of the past and turned to the lessons of history. Although applying the insights of men like Walter Bagehot, Thorstein Veblen, John Maynard Keynes, Joseph Schumpeter, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman to today's trying times risks asking questions that dead men are ill-equipped to answer, putting words into their mouths, and projecting our own opinions disguised in their authoritative mantles, the contributors to this volume all believe that this is a useful exercise; we can gain crucial insights for today and tomorrow from great economists of yesterday. Although they recognize that the historical record is often murky, our contributors agree that we can learn a lot from history