Warren J. Samuels

This book examines the use, principally in economics, of the concept of the invisible hand, centering on Adam Smith. It interprets the concept as ideology, knowledge, and a linguistic phenomenon. It shows how the principal Chicago School interpretation misperceives and distorts what Smith believed on the economic role of government. The essays further show how Smith was silent as to his intended meaning, using the term to set minds at rest; how the claim that the invisible hand is the foundational concept of economics is repudiated by numerous leading economic theorists; that several dozen identities given the invisible hand renders the term ambiguous and inconclusive; that no such thing as an invisible hand exists; and that calling something an invisible hand adds nothing to knowledge. Finally, the essays show that the leading doctrines purporting to claim an invisible hand for the case for capitalism cannot invoke the term but that other nonnormative invisible hand processes are still useful tools.

Essays on an Elusive and Misused Concept in Economics

Erasing the Invisible Hand

Marianne Johnson

Consists of documents from Glenn Johnson and F Taylor Ostrander. This title includes notes from lectures by James E Meade on the linking of monetary theory with the pure theory of value; notes from the Socialist Club at the Cafe Verique in Geneva; and, correspondence between Frank H Knight and F Taylor Ostrander.

Documents from Glenn Johnson and F. Taylor Ostrander

Marc Reed Tool

This collection of articles taken from the Journal of Economic Issues offers both a fresh perspective and a persuasive diagnosis on economic methodology. It simultaneously presents institutional economists' approaches to economic inquiry and policy, as well as a running critique of conceptual flaw and inadequacies of the traditional orthodox neoclassical approach that dominates college curriculums and media.

The Methodology of Economic Thought

George A. Akerlof, Jon Elster, Albert O. Hirschman, Edward Leamer, Harvey Leibenstein, Charles E. Lindblom, John Roemer, Tibor Scitovsky and Amartya Sen are among the economists covered in this appraisal of contemporary economic thought.

Appraisals of Leading Economists

New Horizons in Economic Thought

Ross B. Emmett

Jeff E. Biddle

Contains five sets of lectures taken by Glenn Johnson as a doctoral student in economics at the University of Chicago during 1946-7. This volume also includes notes by Mark Ladenson at Northwestern and from a faculty seminar at MSU on comparative method.

Documents on and from the History of Economic Thought and Methodology

Steven G Medema

From the ancients to the moderns, questions of economic theory and policy have been an important part of intellectual and public debate, engaging the attention of some of history’s greatest minds. This book brings together readings from more than two thousand years of writings on economic subjects. Through these selections, the reader can see first-hand how the great minds of past grappled with some of the central social and economic issues of their times and, in the process, enhanced our understanding of how economic systems function. This collection of readings covers the major themes that have preoccupied economic thinkers throughout the ages, including price determination and the underpinnings of the market system, monetary theory and policy, international trade and finance, income distribution, and the appropriate role for government within the economic system. These ideas unfold, develop, and change course over time at the hands of scholars such as Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, François Quesnay, David Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Robert Malthus, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, William Stanley Jevons, Alfred Marshall, Irving Fisher, Thorstein Veblen, John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman, and Paul Samuelson. Each reading has been selected with a view to both enlightening the reader as to the major contributions of the author in question and to giving the reader a broad view of the development of economic thought and analysis over time. This book will be useful for students, scholars, and lay people with an interest in the history of economic thought and the history of ideas generally.

A Reader; Second Edition

The History of Economic Thought

Contains a collection of articles applying fundamental concepts of power, property, regulation and the compensation principle to contemporary topics: the wealth maximization hypothesis, the Coase theorem, public utility regulation, and other topics in law and economics.

Volume 2: Applications

Essays on the Economic Role of Government

Presents two articles on Adam Smith, one on his use of the concept of the invisible hand, and another on his use of Isaac Newton's methodology. This book also includes an article on rival conceptions of distribution in the 20th century and introductory notes to the study of the history of economic thought.

A Research Annual

Lily Xiao Hong Lee

This collection brings together articles written by Gardiner C. Means, a leading institutionalist and post-Keynesian economist. Means studies the modern corporation and its implications for the institution on private property and the economic systems as a whole. The selections illuminate Means' analysis of the corporate revolution, the role of administered pricing and the consequences for macro-economic instability in the American economy. The book includes the controversial theoretical chapters for his proposed Harvard dissertation, his essay on industrial prices and their inflexibility, the causes of depression, administered prices and the risk of inflation, his analysis of stagflation and the control of inflation. An essay by his widow, Caroline F. Ware, examines the resistance of the American economics profession to Means' theory of administered prices.

The Heterodox Economics of Gardiner C. Means

John B. Davis

Assembling contributions from top thinkers in the field, thiscompanion offers a comprehensive and sophisticated exploration ofthe history of economic thought. The volume has a threefold focus:the history of economic thought, the history of economics as adiscipline, and the historiography of economic thought. Provides sophisticated introductions to a vast array oftopics. Focuses on a unique range of topics, including the history ofeconomic thought, the history of the discipline of economics, andthe historiography of economic thought.

A Companion to the History of Economic Thought

1 Warren J. Samuels The study of economics as discourse requires a perspective that focuses on the relationships among knowledge (or truth), discourse (or lan guage), and meaning. Central to this task is the recognition that the con duct of economic analysis uses words and that words embody meanings that are applied to the object of study, but do not necessarily derive from that object although they define that object for us. Knowledge Economists are engaged in efforts to understand and explain the econ omy. In the pursuit of this knowledge they have attempted to make coherent the respect(s) in which belief is to be accepted as knowledge, or the sense(s) in which this knowledge has the quality of "truth. " The field of methodology in economics parallels the fields of epistemology and philosophy of science in the attempt to make sense of and to prescribe the terms on which efforts at knowledge may be accepted as "true," or the terms on which statements can be accepted as "knowledge. " The conduct of such methodological inquiry typically treats economics as a science 1 2 ECONOMICS AS DISCOURSE engaged in the pursuit of truth as an epistemological category - though there have almost always been economists who were skeptical of the status of economics as a science, and the pursuit of knowledge is only one of three putative function of economics, the other two being psychic balm and social control.

An Analysis of the Language of Economists

Economics As Discourse

The Concepts of Major Business and Labor Organizations on the Role of Government in the Economy

Describes the graduate career of F.Taylor Ostrander, notable the year spent at Oxford University. This volume also contains two documents important for the history of Institutional Economics, John R. Commons' "Reasonable Value"; and notes from Clarence E. Ayres' final course taught on institutional economics, at the University of Texas.

Warren J. Samuels

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