Synopses & Reviews
The Academic Scribblers offers a thoughtful and highly literate summary of modern economic thought. It presents the story of economics through the lives of twelve major modern economists, beginning with Alfred Marshall and concluding with Paul Samuelson and Milton Friedman. In a very real sense, this book picks up where Robert Heilbroner's classic
The Wordly Philosophers leaves off. Whereas Heilbroner begins with Smith and ends with Joseph Schumpeter, Breit and Ransom bring the story of modern American and British economic theory up to the 1980s.
The Academic Scribblers is an elegant summary of modern economic policy debate and an enticement into a happy engagement with the "dismal science" of economics."
Originally published in 1998.
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Review
"As a guide to the intellectual origins of many hotly debated current and proposed economic policies, The Academic Scribblers is an outstanding success."--J. Bernard Burnham, National Review
Review
"Even to try to survey so much is commendable and the authors have done more. They take the reader through the ideas of the twelve in a way that shows that they are competent theorists themselves."--William D. Grampp, The American Political Science Review
Review
"[The Academic Scribblers] is a compact, lucid survey of the ideas of an even dozen British and American economists.... A splendid book. It should be read by every undergraduate student of economics."--William H. Miernyk, Social Science Quarterly
Table of Contents
| Foreword | |
| Preface to the First Edition | |
| Preface to the Second Edition | |
Ch. 1 | Introduction | 1 |
Pt. 1 | The Pillars of Neoclassical Economics | |
Ch. 2 | The Intellectual Gantry of Neoclassical Economic Policy | 7 |
Ch. 3 | Alfred Marshall - Exemplar of Neoclassical Economic Thought | 19 |
Pt. 2 | The Eclipse of Neoclassical Economics | |
Ch. 4 | Thorstein Veblen - The Abrogation of Consumer Sovereignty | 31 |
Ch. 5 | Arthur Cecil Pigou - Externalities in Production | 43 |
Ch. 6 | Edward Hastings Chamberlin - The Wastes of Competition | 53 |
Ch. 7 | John Maynard Keynes - Unemployment in Equilibrium | 65 |
Pt. 3 | The New Economics | |
Ch. 8 | Alvin H. Hansen - The American Keynes | 81 |
Ch. 9 | Paul A. Samuelson - From Economic Wunderkind to Policymaker | 107 |
Ch. 10 | Abba P. Lerner - The Artist as Economist | 137 |
Ch. 11 | John Kenneth Galbraith - Economist as Social Critic | 161 |
Pt. 4 | The New Neoclassicism | |
Ch. 12 | Frank H. Knight - Philosopher of the Counterrevolution in Economics | 193 |
Ch. 13 | Henry C. Simons - Radical Proponent of Laissez-faire | 207 |
Ch. 14 | Milton Friedman - Classical Liberal as Economic Scientist | 223 |
Ch. 15 | Conclusion | 263 |
| Afterword: The Academic Scribblers after Twenty-Five Years | 267 |
| Index | 275 |