Complexity and the History of Economic Thought - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0415756626 ISBN 13: 9780415756624

Publisher: Routledge, 2014

Synopsis

A new approach to science has recently developed. It is called the complexity approach. A number of researchers, such as Brian Arthur and Buz Brock, have used this approach to consider issues in economics. This volume considers the complexity approach to economics from a history of thought and methodological perspectives. It finds that the ideas underlying complexity have been around for a long time, and that this new work in complexity has many precursors in the history of economic thought.
This book consists of twelve studies on the issue of complexity and the history of economic thought. The studies relate complexity to the ideas of specific economists such as Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Alfred Marshall and Ragnar Frisch, as well as to specific schools of thought such as the Austrian and Institutionalist schools.
The result of looking a the history of economic thought from a complexity perspective not only gives us additional insight into the complexity vision, it also gives insight into the history of economic thought. When that history is viewed from a complexity perspective, the rankings of past economists change. Smith and Hayek move up in the rankings while Ricardo moves down.

About this title

About the Author:

David Colander has been the Christian A. Johnson Distinguished Professor of Economics at Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont since 1982. He previously taught at Columbia University, Vassar College, and the University of Miami. Professor Colander has authored, co-authored, or edited more than 35 books and 100 articles on a wide range of topics. His books have been, or are being, translated into a number of different languages, including Chinese, Bulgarian, Polish, Italian, and Spanish. He is a former President of both the Eastern Economic Association and History of Economics Society and is, or has been, on the editorial boards of the Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Journal of Economic Methodology, Eastern Economic Journal, Journal of Economic Education, The Journal of Socioeconomics, and Journal of Economic Perspectives. He has also been a consultant to Time-Life Films, the U.S. Congress, a Brookings Policy Fellow, and a Visiting Scholar at Nuffield College, Oxford. In 2001 2002 he was the Kelly Professor of Distinguished Teaching at Princeton University.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0415756626
• ISBN 13: 9780415756624
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 264
• Editor: Colander David