Introduction to Political Economy, 4th Edition

Few economics programs today offer students the opportunity to study the history of economic thought or the philosophical foundations of diverse schools of economics. Introduction to Political Economy reintroduces these ideas into the curriculum by presenting the work of four of the most influential, but now overlooked, economic thinkers of modern times -- Karl Marx, Thorstein Veblen, Jaohn Maynard Keynes, and John Kenneth Galbraith. The revised and expanded fourth edition also provides a fresh look at Adam Smith. The authors present these thinkers' central ideas, including their writings on social class, the role of government in taming capitalist economies, and the misleading assumptions about human behavior in mainstream models. They conclude by presenting classic critiques of monopoly capitalism, and examining the Swedish "middle way" between capitalism and socialism. Introduction to Political Economy is published by Dollars & Sense, the award-winning magazine of popular economics. Dollars & Sense also publishes Real World Macro, Real World Micro, Current Economic Issues, The Wealth Inequality Reader, Real World Globalization, Real World Banking, The Environment in Crisis, and Unlevel Playing Fields: Understanding Wage Inequality and Discrimination.

Charles Sackrey, Geoffrey Schneider, and Janet Knoedler teach economics at Bucknell University.