From Oikonomia to Political Economy

From Oikonomia to Political Economy
Author: Germano Maifreda
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2016-04-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317131983

Renaissance Europe witnessed a surge of interest in new scientific ideas and theories. Whilst the study of this 'Scientific Revolution' has dramatically shifted our appreciation of many facets of the early-modern world, remarkably little attention has been paid to its influence upon one key area; that of economics. Through an interrogation of the relationship between economic and scientific developments in early-modern Western Europe, this book demonstrates how a new economic epistemology appeared that was to have profound consequences both at the time, and for subsequent generations. Dr Maifreda argues that the new attention shown by astronomers, physicians, aristocrats, men of letters, travellers and merchants for the functioning of economic life and markets, laid the ground for a radically new discourse that envisioned 'economics' as an independent field of scientific knowledge. By researching the historical context surrounding this new field of knowledge, he identifies three key factors that contributed to the cultural construction of economics. Firstly, Italian Humanism and Renaissance, which promoted new subjects, methods and quantitative analysis. Secondly, European overseas expansion, which revealed the existence of economic cultures previously unknown to Europeans. Thirdly factor identified is the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century crisis of traditional epistemologies, which increasingly valued empirical scientific knowledge over long-held beliefs. Based on a wide range of published and archival sources, the book illuminates new economic sensibilities within a range of established and more novel scientific disciplines (including astronomy, physics, ethnography, geology, and chemistry/alchemy). By tracing these developments within the wider social and cultural fields of everyday commercial life, the study offers a fascinating insight into the relationship between economic knowledge and science during the early-modern period.

Wilhelm R”pke's Political Economy

Wilhelm R”pke's Political Economy
Author: Samuel Gregg
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2010-01-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1849803323

We are extremely grateful then to the brilliant researcher and scholar, Samuel Gregg of the Acton Institute, for a concise, penetrating, and thorough analysis of Röpke s contribution to intellectual life. It breaks new ground, is highly readable, and adds considerably to the economic literature. It should become mandatory reading for every student of political economy. . . The purpose of Gregg s masterful book is to provide a descriptive and critical introduction to Röpke s understanding of political economy. . . This brilliant, analytical intellectual history will hopefully bring back interest in both Röpke and his Humane Economy . We would all be the beneficiaries. Theodore Roosevelt Malloch, The American Spectator Wilhelm Röpke s Political Economy is the story of one man s efforts to rehabilitate a Smithian approach to political economy in ways that met the economic and political challenges of the twentieth century. Wilhelm Röpke is best known for his decisive intellectual contributions to the economic reforms that took post-war West Germany from ruin to riches within a decade. In this informative book, Samuel Gregg presents Röpke as a sophisticated économiste-philosophe in the tradition of Adam Smith, who was as much concerned with exploring and reforming the moral, social and intellectual foundations of the market economy, as he was in examining subjects such as business-cycles, trade-policy, inflation, employment, and the welfare state. By situating Röpke s ideas in the history of modern Western economic thought, Samuel Gregg illustrates that while Röpke s neoliberalism departed from much nineteenth-century classical liberal thought, it was also profoundly anti-Keynesian and contested key aspects of the post-war Keynesian economic consensus. This book challenges many contemporary interpretations of Wilhelm Röpke s economic thought, and will therefore be an invaluable resource for scholars, graduate students, and researchers with an interest in economics, history of economic thought, political philosophy, economic philosophy, and international trade. Policymakers will also find much to interest them in this captivating book.

New Perspectives on the History of Political Economy

New Perspectives on the History of Political Economy
Author: Robert Fredona
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 438
Release: 2018-03-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 331958247X

This volume offers a snapshot of the resurgent historiography of political economy in the wake of the ongoing global financial crisis, and suggests fruitful new agendas for research on the political-economic nexus as it has developed in the Western world since the end of the Middle Ages. New Perspectives on the History of Political Economy brings together a select group of young and established scholars from a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds—history, economics, law, and political science—in an effort to begin a re-conceptualization of the origins and history of political economy through a variety of still largely distinct but complementary historical approaches—legal and intellectual, literary and philosophical, political and economic—and from a variety of related perspectives: debt and state finance, tariffs and tax policy, the encouragement and discouragement of trade, merchant communities and companies, smuggling and illicit trades, mercantile and colonial systems, economic cultures, and the history of economic doctrines more narrowly construed. The first decade of the twenty-first century, bookended by 9/11 and a global financial crisis, witnessed the clamorous and urgent return of both 'the political' and 'the economic' to historiographical debates. It is becoming more important than ever to rethink the historical role of politics (and, indeed, of government) in business, economic production, distribution, and exchange. The artefacts of pre-modern and modern political economy, from the fourteenth through the twentieth centuries, remain monuments of perennial importance for understanding how human beings grappled with and overcame material hardship, organized their political and economic communities, won great wealth and lost it, conquered and were conquered. The present volume, assembling some of the brightest lights in the field, eloquently testifies to the rich and powerful lessons to be had from such a historical understanding of political economy and of power in an economic age.

Political Economy for the 21st Century

Political Economy for the 21st Century
Author: Charles J. Whalen
Publisher: M.E. Sharpe
Total Pages: 316
Release: 1996
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781563246487

This text provides an alternative to conventional economics, drawing on the neoclassical and non-neoclassical insights of prominent economists from America and England. It is intended to provide productive analyses of several contemporary economic problems.

Essays in the History of Mainstream Political Economy

Essays in the History of Mainstream Political Economy
Author: Warren J. Samuels
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Total Pages: 293
Release: 1992-07-12
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780333548264

This book is a collection of articles on schools, individuals and topics within the mainstream of the history of economic thought. The principal schools are the Physiocrats and the English Classical Economists. The principal individuals are Francois Quesnay, Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Francis Y. Edgeworth, Friedrich von Wieser, Frank W. Taussig, and William H. Hutt. The principal topics include the economic role of government, power, the psychology of economics, and the early history of macroeconomics.

The Political Economy of Theocracy

The Political Economy of Theocracy
Author: R. Wintrobe
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2009-03-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 023062006X

This book consists of essays by leading scholars in economics and political science which try deepen our understanding of how theocratic regimes behave, by providing up to date empirical surveys by leading scholars of the economic performance of Iran and of Muslim countries in general, and by looking at the behavior of historical theocracies.

The Political Economy of James Buchanan

The Political Economy of James Buchanan
Author: David Reisman
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 211
Release: 1989-11-20
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1349105198

A survey of the political economy of James Buchanan seeking to explain his theories in detail and evaluate them in depth, covering topics such as the constitution and its failure, democracy, operational rules for the constitution and economics.

The Rise of Political Economy as a Science

The Rise of Political Economy as a Science
Author: Deborah A Redman
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 504
Release: 2003-01-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780262264259

Reviews the epistemological ideas that inspired the classical economists: the methodological principles of Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Newton, Locke, Hume, Stewart, Herschel, and Whewell. The classical age of economics was marked by an intense interest in scientific methodology. It was, moreover, an age when science and philosophy were not yet distinct disciplines, and the educated were polymaths. The classical economists were acutely aware that suitable methods had to be developed before a body of knowledge could be deemed philosophical or scientific. They did not formulate their methodological views in a vacuum, but drew on a rich collection of philosophical ideas. Consequently, issues of methodology were at the heart of political economys rise as a science. The classical era of economics opened under Adam Smith with political economy understood as an integral part of a broader system of social philosophy; by the end, it had emerged via J. S. Mill as a "separate science", albeit one still inextricably tied to the other social sciences and to ethics. The Rise of Political Economy as a Science opens with a review of the epistemological ideas that inspired the classical economists: the methodological principles of Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Newton, Locke, Hume, Stewart, Herschel, and Whewell. These principles were influential not just in the development of political economy, but in the rise of social science in general. The author then examines science in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain, with a particular emphasis on the all-important concept of induction. Having laid the necessary groundwork, she proceeds to a history and analysis of the methodologies of four economist-philosophers—Adam Smith, Robert Malthus, David Ricardo, and J. S. Mill—selected for their historical importance as founders of economics and for their common Scottish intellectual lineage. Concluding remarks put classical methodology into a broader historical perspective.