A Brief History of Economic Thought

by Alessandro Roncaglia

The evolution of economic thought can be traced back from its beginnings in classical antiquity up to the present day. In this book, Professor Alessandro Roncaglia offers a clear, concise and updated version of his award-winning The Wealth of Ideas, studying the development of economic thought through perspectives and debates on the economy and society over time. With chapters on prominent economic theorists, including William Petty, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes, as well as on other important figures and key debates of each period, Roncaglia critically evaluates the foundations of the marginalist-neoclassical (scarcity-utility) approach in comparison to the Classical-Keynes approach. A comprehensive guide to the history of economic thought, this book will be of value not only to undergraduate and postgraduate students studying economic thought, but also to any readers desiring to study how economics has evolved up to the present day.

Genres: Economics, Nonfiction

320 pages, Paperback

Published September 14, 2017

About the author

Professor of Economics in the Department of Economic Sciences, University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’.

Reviews

[Ivan Savić · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book is hard to read, it is full of long sentences and additional comenting in brackets. It follows the economy through theories of notable people. Mostly mentioning the names of the books they wrote, but scarsly and not clearly explaining what thay actualy tought and wrote about.

Here is one random sentence to ilustrate what I mean:
"Sraffa (1925) argued that the problem of the ‘empty boxes’
does not concern how to apply the three categories to real situations
but rather stems from insurmountable theoretical difficulties within the
theory of firm and industry equilibrium, resulting from a conceptual
confusion: in classical political economy the law of decreasing returns
was associated with the problem of rent (that is, with the theory of
distribution), while the law of increasing returns was associated with the
division of labour, or in other words general economic progress (that is,
with the theory of production)."

It is written to be more academic, so it is almost unreadable for average user. Some of the concepts are not explained at all. And you surely do not get any clearer idea of how economy actually works.