2. Outline
Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations
Classical political economy
Capitalism and Marx
Neoclassical thought
Depression and Reconstruction
The "American Way"
Monetarism and the Chicago school
Global times
Contemporary economic thought
3. The Athenians
Oeconomicus By Xenephon
One of the earliest texts in existence
Mainly focuses on ideas regarding household management
4. The Republic by Plato
A seminal text in philosophy and the ideas of democratic and
republican forms of government
Included many preliminary ideas regarding specialization
5. Politics by Aristotle
Aristotles work criticizing many of Platos’s ideas regarding how
society should be run and examining different forms of governments
It began a discussion of private property rights and incentives that
private property begins
6. Mercantilism
Mercantilism is a school of thought that focuses on a nations control of
trade to promote a positive trade balance.
Basically, we should always make sure to sell stuff to other nations to
keep the nation prosperous.
7. Thomas Mun
One of the Earliest Mercantilist
Theorized that a country must export more than it imports to remain
prosperous and advocated for policy pushing frugality and land
utilization.
8. David Hume
Agreed with north that Trade should not be interfered with
Argued that a trade surplus would lead to an increase gold/silver
resulting in price inflation
Hume was a major contributor to thought about morality and ethics.
9. Physiocrats
A group of economists who believe that the wealth of a country is
solely derived from it’s lands value
10. François Quesnay
Wrote the Tableau Economique
Theorized about the productivity of land and the net product of
land.
11. Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot
Developed many of the ideas of Fracois Quesnay
Divided people into three classes , the land owners, agricultural,
and salaried classes.
Said only the new product of land should be taxed
Argued for economic Freedom
12. The Classics
Adam Smith
British Philosopher
Scottish Enlightenment
Father of Modern Economics
Wealth of Nations 1776
Industrial Revolution
Division of Labor
Invisible Hand: Individual effort is the producer of social good
13. Jeremy Bentham
Develop the ideas of Utilitarianism
Believed government should pursue utilitarian policies in regards to
social welfare.
14. Thomas Malthus
An Essay on the Principle of Population published from
1798 to 1826, observed that sooner or later population
gets checked by famine and disease. He wrote in
opposition to the popular view in 18th-century Europe
that saw society as improving and in principle as
perfectible
Malthus thought that the dangers of population growth
would preclude endless progress towards a utopian
society: "The power of population is indefinitely greater
than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for
man".
15. David Ricardo
Member of Parliament
Businessman
Financier
and speculator, who amassed a considerable personal fortune.
Most important contribution was the law of comparative
advantage, a fundamental argument in favor of free trade among
countries and of specialization among individuals
16. John Stuart Mill
British philosopher
Economist
Civil servant
Member of Parliament
Proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by Jeremy
Bentham
17. Karl Marx
pre-eminent socialist economist
Communist Manifesto
Das Kapital 1867
History of class struggles
Hegalian Dialectic
18. Neoclassical Thought
Marginal Utility
application and development of Jeremy Bentham's utilitarianism
determination of prices, outputs, and income distributions in markets
through supply and demand
Mathematical Analysis
Austrian School
19. Alfred Marshall
Attempt to put economics on a more mathematical footing
Marshall's graphical representation is the famous supply and
demand graph
20. Joseph Schumpeter
Advocate the use of deductive logic instead of mathematics
Works on business cycles and innovation
He insisted on the role of the entrepreneurs in an economy
Creative Destruction
Capitalism goes through long-term cycles, because it is entirely
based upon scientific inventions and innovations. A phase of
expansion is made possible by innovations, because they bring
productivity gains and encourage entrepreneurs to invest. When
investors have no more opportunities to invest, the economy goes
into recession
Austrian School
21. Leon Walras
One of three economics that discovered the theory of marginal
utility at the same period of time
Father of the Lausanne School of thought and General Equilibrium
Theory.
22. Carl Menger
One of three economics that discovered the theory of marginal
utility at the same period of time
Father of Austrian Economics and developed the Subjective Theory
of Value
23. Keynesian
John Maynard Keynes
1930s: conditions necessitated public sector action
General Theory provided conceptual reinforcement for New Deal
policies of FDR already being pursued to quell the Great Depression.
...this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run
we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a
task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the
storm is long past the ocean is flat again.
24. Simon Kuznets
Was the creator of national Income Accounting (GDP/GNP) and how
it’s calculated
Originator of the Kuznets Curve (in a countries development inequality
increases then decreases)
26. Milton Friedman
School : Monetarist
Father of Monetarist School of Economics
One of the major libertarian icons of the 20th century
Was against central banks and the gold standard
Believed in the rule based monetary growth (money supply should
grow with productivity and population)
27. Adolf Berle
One of the first to use legal and economic concepts in conjunction
Was a thought leader in what would be known as the field of
corporate governance
29. Thomas Pikkety
French economist who works on wealth and income
inequality. He is the author of the best selling
book Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013) which
emphasizes the themes of his work on wealth
concentrations and distribution over the past 250
years. The book argues that the rate of capital return
in developed countries is persistently greater than
the rate of economic growth, and that this will cause
wealth inequality to increase in the future. To address
this problem, he proposes redistribution through a
global tax on wealth
