This important book not only includes entries on familiar names, such as, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx and Leon Walras, but also includes descriptions of less well known yet equally important economists. Mark Blaug demonstrates that modern economics is an accumulated heritage of specific...

The importance of Whewell, Lardner and Babbage to the history of economic thought is as dependent upon the retrospective reading of their work as it is upon their contemporary significance. However, their individual reactions to the industrial and technological revolutions of the early...

Charles Davenant was one of the leading economic pamphleteers of the 1690s. He frequently developed general principles, some of which sound almost like the early writings of Adam Smith. He was, however, a Mercantilist in the sense that he underlined the advantages of a favourable balance of...

The methodology of economics has long been dominated by the writings of Karl Popper and Imre Lakatos, two outstanding philosophers of science in the post-war period. This major new book focuses on the application of Lakatosian principles of appraisal to modern economics. An international group...

Francois Quesnay is best known for the Tableau Economique, the proposition that only agriculture generates a positive 'net product' and that industry is ‘sterile’. He recommended a ‘single tax’ on ground rent and invented the slogan ‘laissez faire, laissez...

Until comparatively recently, Adam Smith was known mainly as the author of a single book, The Wealth of Nations. Modern scholarship and the greater availability of his other work has thrown new light on Adam Smith suggesting that he was no mere economist but a system builder on a grand scale...