Book description
This is a history of economic thought from Adam Smith to John Maynard Keynes - but it is a history with a difference. Firstly, it is a history of economic theory, not of economic doctrines, that is, it is consistently focused on theoretical analysis, undiluted by entertaining historical digressions or…
Why read it?
2 authors picked Economic Theory in Retrospect as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Mark Blaug escaped the Netherlands, just in time before the Nazis marched in, went to New York University, and eventually wrote this colossal overview of the entire body of the economics literature.
He is capable of ordering different formal approaches to the subject matter in plain English, what an achievement.
From Thijs' list on microeconomics on how markets are interconnected.
The corrective for Schumpeter. How an orthodox post-1945 American economist interprets the historical greats of economic thought.
For those who know some economics already, it translates into a language they can understand. Blaug was a very distinguished scholar himself, an independent thinker, a very clear writer.
If this is not always what the greats really meant, it shows what modern analytical economics is losing and has lost by neglecting its past.
From Avner's list on the history of economic thought.
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