James Mill

Pioneers in Economics

by Mark Blaug

Mill, Rae, West and Joplin were, until recently, relegated to the footnotes of the history of economic thought. In particular, Rae's "New Principles on the Subject of Political Economy" was not reprinted until the 1960s and John Mill has been remembered more for his eldest son than for himself. However, as this volume demonstrates, these four journalists and pamphleteers were important in pre-empting and encouraging other economists, most especially David Ricardo. John Rae has been accredited with being a forerunner of the Austrian theory of capital. James Mill made the first declaration in English of Say's theory of markets and, quite possibly, Ricardo's Principle of Comparative Advantage. The currency and banking tracts written by Thomas Joplin in the 1820s and 1830s have been arduously mined by a variety of commentators as containing nuggets of later monetary doctrines, and Edward West stated the theory of differential rent before Ricardo, and did so in virtually the same form and language. This collection attempts to rehabilitate these lesser known figures in the history of economic thought.

416 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1991

About the author

Mark Blaug is a British economist (naturalised in 1982), who has covered a broad range of topics over his long career. In 1955 he received his PhD from Columbia University in New York. Besides shorter periods in public service and in international organisations he has held academic appointments in - among others - Yale University, the University of London, the London School of Economics and the University of Buckingham. He currently lives in Leiden and works as Visiting Professor in the Netherlands, University of Amsterdam and Erasmus University in Rotterdam, where he is also co-director of CHIMES (Center for History in Management and Economics).
Mark Blaug has made far reaching contributions to a range of topics in economic thought throughout his career. Apart from valuable contributions to the economics of art and the economics of education, he is best known for his work in history of economic thought and the methodology of economics.