Attempting to survey centuries of economic thinking in one semester is a difficult task. The tradeoff between breadth and depth forces the instructor to make some difficult decisions about what to include and what to omit. This semester, we will be taking a different approach than I have ever tried before. We will be surveying the development of economic thought from the ancient Greeks and Hebrews to virtually the present, using as a text a book that presents a largely non-technical overview of the subject. What we do in class will vary from day to day. Some days we will discuss a chapter from Roger Backhouse’s Ordinary Business of Life. Other days I will lecture on particular topics. Still other days we will engage in seminars on particular topics. On seminar days, you will be responsible for having read primary and/or secondary materials and will be expected to engage in discussion of those readings. Finally, we will use a couple of class days, plus the final exam period, to let you demonstrate what you have learned.
Although we will spend a large amount of time surveying the most important developments in economic thinking, we will also spend a fair amount of time delving more deeply into particular topics. In the first section of the course, I pay special attention to the massive changes in the way educated people thought about economic issues. The decline of religion as a controlling social force, the rise of science, and the development of market economies all contributed to this process. In the second section, we will begin by spending a full week examining the ideas of Adam Smith and will end with five days on the beginnings of modern microeconomic theory. Finally, in the third section, we will spend two days considering the meaning of J.M. Keynes’s General Theory and a couple of days examining how Keynes’s followers (the Keynesians) and their modern opponents (the monetarists) forged modern macroeconomics.
Any course is the History of Economic Thought is somewhat idiosyncratic; the
preferences of the instructor dictate what is emphasized. So it is with this
course. Think of this as a guided tour, and recognize that I’m the guide.