Fifty Major Economists

354 Pages·2006·1.4 MB·English

by  Steven Pressman

FIFTY MAJOR ECONOMISTS
Fully updated to include the most recent developments in economic
thought, this new edition explores the work of fifty major econo-
mists, from seventeenth century philosophers such as John Locke to
contemporary economists such as Gary Becker, Robert Lucas,
Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz. Other entries include:
(cid:1) Adam Smith
(cid:1) Karl Marx
(cid:1) John Maynard Keynes
(cid:1) Milton Friedman
(cid:1) Daniel Kahneman
Fifty Major Economists contains brief biographical information on each
featured economist and an explanation of their major contributions
to economics, along with simple illustrations of their ideas, references
to their major works, guides to further reading, and a glossary of
terms. This book is an important and accessible resource for students
of economics.
Steven Pressman is Professor of Economics and Finance at Mon-
mouth University, New Jersey. He is the author of Quesnay’s Tableau
E´conomique and editor (with Richard Holt) of A New Guide to Post
Keynesian Economics, which is also published by Routledge. He also
serves as co-editor of the Review of Political Economy and Associate
Editor and Book Review Editor of the Eastern Economic Journal.
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FIFTY MAJOR
ECONOMISTS
Second Edition
Steven Pressman
Firstpublished1999
byRoutledge
Thiseditionpublished2006
byRoutledge
2ParkSquare,MiltonPark,Abingdon,OxonOX144RN
SimultaneouslypublishedintheUSAandCanada
byRoutledge
270MadisonAve,NewYork,NY10016
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
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#1999,2006StevenPressman
Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedorreproducedorutilizedinanyformorby
anyelectronic,mechanical,orothermeans,nowknownorhereafterinvented,includingphotocopying
andrecording,orinanyinformationstorageorretrievalsystem,withoutpermissioninwritingfromthe
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BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData
AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Pressman,Steven.
Fiftymajoreconomists/StevenPressman.–2nded.
p.cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferences.
ISBN 0-415-36648-8 (hardback) – ISBN 0-415-36649-6 (pbk.) 1. Economists–
Biography.2. Economics–History. I.Title.
HB76.P742006
330.092’2–dc22
2005025713
ISBN10 0–415–36648–8 ISBN13 978–0–415–36648–9(hbk)
ISBN10 0–415–36649–6 ISBN13 978–0–415–36649–6(pbk)
ISBN10 0–203–01920–2 ISBN13 978–0–203–01920–7(ebk)
To the memory of my parents, Jeffrey and Phyllis Pressman

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF
CONTENTS
Alphabetical list of contents ix
Preface xi
Introduction xiii
Thomas Mun (1571–1641) 3
William Petty (1623–87) 7
John Locke (1632–1704) 12
Richard Cantillon (1687?–1734?) 17
Franc¸ois Quesnay (1694–1774) 21
David Hume (1711–76) 28
Adam Smith (1723–90) 32
Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) 41
Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) 46
David Ricardo (1772–1823) 51
Antoine Augustin Cournot (1801–77) 59
John Stuart Mill (1806–73) 64
Karl Marx (1818–83) 70
Le´on Walras (1834–1910) 78
William Stanley Jevons (1835–82) 84
Carl Menger (1840–1921) 89
Alfred Marshall (1842–1924) 95
Francis Ysidro Edgeworth (1845–1926) 102
John Bates Clark (1847–1938) 109
Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923) 115
Eugen Von Bo¨hm-Bawerk (1851–1914) 121
Knut Wicksell (1851–1926) 126
Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929) 131
Irving Fisher (1867–1947) 137
Arthur Cecil Pigou (1877–1959) 143
John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) 149
vii
CHRONOLOGICALLISTOFCONTENTS
Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950) 158
Piero Sraffa (1898–1983) 163
Gunnar Myrdal (1898–1987) 168
Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) 174
Simon Kuznets (1901–85) 181
John von Neumann (1903–57) 187
Joan Robinson (1903–83) 194
Jan Tinbergen (1903–94) 201
John Hicks (1904–89) 208
Wassily Leontief (1906–99) 217
Nicholas Kaldor (1908–86) 223
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–) 229
Milton Friedman (1912–) 235
Paul Samuelson (1915–) 243
Franco Modigliani (1918–2003) 250
James M. Buchanan (1919–) 256
Douglass Cecil North (1920–) 261
Kenneth J. Arrow (1921–) 267
Barbara R. Bergmann (1927–) 273
Gary Becker (1930–) 280
Amartya Sen (1933–) 286
Daniel Kahneman (1934–) 292
Robert E. Lucas, Jr. (1937–) 300
Joseph Stiglitz (1943–) 306
Glossary 314
viii