The Poverty of Clio

The Poverty of Clio PDF

Author: Francesco Boldizzoni

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2011-07-05

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 1400838851

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The Poverty of Clio challenges the hold that cliometrics--an approach to economic history that employs the analytical tools of economists--has exerted on the study of our economic past. In this provocative book, Francesco Boldizzoni calls for the reconstruction of economic history, one in which history and the social sciences are brought to bear on economics, and not the other way around. Boldizzoni questions the appeal of economics over history--which he identifies as a distinctly American attitude--exposing its errors and hidden ideologies, and revealing how it fails to explain economic behavior itself. He shows how the misguided reliance on economic reasoning to interpret history has come at the expense of insights from the humanities and has led to a rejection of valuable past historical research. Developing a better alternative to new institutional economics and the rational choice approach, Boldizzoni builds on the extraordinary accomplishments of twentieth-century European historians and social thinkers to offer fresh ideas for the renewal of the field. Economic history needs to rediscover the true relationship between economy and culture, and promote an authentic alliance with the social sciences, starting with sociology and anthropology. It must resume its dialogue with the humanities, but without shrinking away from theory when constructing its models. The Poverty of Clio demonstrates why history must exert its own creative power on economics.

Economic Thought and History

Economic Thought and History PDF

Author: Monika Poettinger

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-02-12

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 1317326725

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Economic Thought and History looks at the relationship between facts and thought in historical economic research, viewing it in the context of periods of economic crisis and providing detailed analyses of methods used in determining the bond between economic history and economic theory. This interdisciplinary collection brings together international researchers in the history of economic thought and economic history in order to confront varying approaches to the study of economic facts and ideas, rethinking boundaries, methodologies and the object of their disciplines. The chapters explore the relationship between economic thought and economic theory from a variety of perspectives, exploring the relationship between history and economics, and the boundaries defining the history of economic thought, in terms of both single authors and schools of thought. The book offers particular insights on the Italian tradition of thought. The uniquely interdisciplinary and analytical approach presented here bridges the methodological gap between these disciplines, unearthing a fertile common ground of research. This book is intended for Postgraduate students conducting further research into the field, or for professors and academics of economic history and history of economic thought.

Market Ethics and Practices, c.1300–1850

Market Ethics and Practices, c.1300–1850 PDF

Author: Simon Middleton

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-11-28

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 1351343297

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Market Ethics and Practices, c. 1300–1850 analyses the nature, development, and operation of market ethics in the context of social practices, ranging from rituals of exchange and unofficial expectations to law, institutions, and formal regulations from the late medieval through to the modern era. Divided into two parts, the first explores the principles and regulations of market ethics, such as the relations between professed norms and economic behaviour across a range of geographies and chronologies. The chapters consider key subjects such as medieval attitudes towards merchant activities across Europe, North Africa, and Asia; market regulations and the notion of the "common good"; Adam Smith’s conception of moral capitalism; and the combining of religious and capitalist ethics in Nat Turner’s "Confession." The second part provides microstudies that offer insights into topics such as household and market relations in colonial New England; the harsher side of the consumer economy experienced by a family of parasol sellers from Lyon; informal Jewish networks in the early modern Caribbean and slave trade; merchant networks and commercial litigation in eighteenth-century France; and early encounters and the informal norms of fur trading between Europeans and Native Americans. This book provides an understanding of the key pre-modern economic historiography, whilst pointing students towards new debates and the historical significance for our collective economic future. It is ideal for students and postgraduates of late medieval and early modern economic history.

Inequality in America

Inequality in America PDF

Author: Robert S. Rycroft

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2021-06-18

Total Pages: 440

ISBN-13:

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This authoritative reference work explores the factors driving the much-debated increase in economic inequality in U.S. society, as well as the impact that this divide is having on U.S. culture, politics, families, communities, and institutions. This reference work provides an authoritative and comprehensive resource for both students and scholars who are interested in learning more about the rich-poor divide in the United States—a divide regarded by many lawmakers, researchers, pundits, and concerned citizens as one of the nation's most serious problems. The book provides important historical background for understanding how the nation has grappled with (or ignored) this issue in the past, examines specific causes of inequality identified by observers across the political spectrum, and summarizes the potential consequences (both present and future) of economic inequality. This book examines more than 25 issues frequently cited as factors contributing to the rapidly widening gap between socioeconomic classes in the U.S., ranging from such demographic factors as race and gender to tax code provisions and differences in access to quality education and health care. The book also provides both a retrospective and prospective look at government policies aimed at addressing inequality or assisting the poor. Finally, the book looks ahead to survey the future of inequality in America.

How Crises Shaped Economic Ideas and Policies

How Crises Shaped Economic Ideas and Policies PDF

Author: Nicos Christodoulakis

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2015-04-13

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 3319168711

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This book explores how successful the various tenets of economic thought have been in prognosticating or remedying economic crises. Examining key episodes in economic history, from famines in antiquity to present-day financial collapse, the author finds that several theories failed to cope with a crisis and lost their academic impact. The author also presents cases in which major theoretical innovations were achieved after the experience of a crisis as well as cases where a completely new theory was needed to explain and face the events. This book will appeal to researchers and scholars interested in understanding how theoretical developments in economics are affected by real-world economic crises.

The Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution PDF

Author: William J. Ashworth

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2017-01-26

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1474286178

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The British Industrial Revolution has long been seen as the spark for modern, global industrialization and sustained economic growth. Indeed the origins of economic history, as a discipline, lie in 19th-century European and North American attempts to understand the foundation of this process. In this book, William J. Ashworth questions some of the orthodoxies concerning the history of the industrial revolution and offers a deep and detailed reassessment of the subject that focuses on the State and its role in the development of key British manufactures. In particular, he explores the role of State regulation and protectionism in nurturing Britain's negligible early manufacturing base. Taking a long view, from the mid 17th century through to the 19th century, the analysis weaves together a vast range of factors to provide one of the fullest analyses of the industrial revolution, and one that places it firmly within a global context, showing that the Industrial Revolution was merely a short moment within a much larger and longer global trajectory. This book is an important intervention in the debates surrounding modern industrial history will be essential reading for anyone interested in global and comparative economic history and the history of globalization.

A Concise History of Economists' Assumptions about Markets

A Concise History of Economists' Assumptions about Markets PDF

Author: Robert Edward Mitchell

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2014-08-28

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1440833109

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This open-minded, multidisciplinary approach challenges existing world views on the endogenous and exogenous forces that drive markets and economies. Nine narrative chapters and a conclusion provide an accessible history of key premises and assumptions in the mental models proposed by several major economists since the 1776 publication of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations and show how—and why—those models and their underlying assumptions have changed over time. The book addresses the legacies of major economists, describes their historical and analytical influence, documents the interaction among various schools of thought as well as how they differ, and the implications that this history has for economics and the policy sciences in the decades ahead. The author focuses on the mental maps economists have created in an attempt to understand the forces that destroyed "order," explaining how these maps incorporate a non-mathematical presentation of evolving dictionaries, novel analytical perspectives, new evidence, and a reliance on value assumptions. He traces the underlying assumptions, continuities, and differences among major economists including Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo, Alfred Marshall, John Maynard Keynes, Karl Marx, Thorstein Veblen, and Joseph Schumpeter. Readers will grasp how the classic theories still influence economists' mental models today and come away with a basic economic literacy that puts this important social science in historical context. This is essential reading for all the social and policy sciences.

History and Economic Life

History and Economic Life PDF

Author: Georg Christ

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-02-27

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 0429015445

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History and Economic Life offers students a wide-ranging introduction to both quantitative and qualitative approaches to interpreting economic history sources from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century. Having identified an ever-widening gap between the use of qualitative sources by cultural historians and quantitative sources by economic historians, the book aims to bridge the divide by making economic history sources more accessible to students and the wider public, and highlighting the need for a complementary rather than exclusive approach. Divided into two parts, the book begins by equipping students with a toolbox to approach economic history sources, considering the range of sources that might be of use and introducing different ways of approaching them. The second part consists of case studies that examine how economic historians use such sources, helping readers to gain a sense of context and understanding of how these sources can be used. The book thereby sheds light on important debates both within and beyond the field, and highlights the benefits gained when combining qualitative and quantitative approaches to source analysis. Introducing sources often avoided in culturally-minded history or statistically-minded economic history courses respectively, and advocating a combined quantitative and qualitative approach, it is an essential resource for students undertaking source analysis within the field.

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