This book offers a pluralistic vision of the way economists have dealt with the question of power in society over the last two centuries. Economists’ ideas about power are examined from political, theoretical and policy-making points of view, with additional discussion of the active...

Milton Friedman once predicted that advances in scientific economics would resolve debates about whether raising the minimum wage is good policy. Decades later, Friedman's prediction has not come true. In Where Economics Went Wrong, David Colander and Craig Freedman argue that it never will....

1. John Locke and the Three Pillars of Liberty -- 2. Jean Jacques Rousseau and the Three Pillars of Equality -- 3. Adam Smith and the system of natural liberty -- 4. The arrival of the liberty narrative in America -- 5. The French revolution and the socialist alternative -- 6. The evolution of...