Written on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Piero Sraffa's "Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities," the papers selected and contained in "Sraffa and the Reconstruction of Economic Theory" account for the work completed around the two central aspects of his contribution to economic analysis, namely the criticism of the neoclassical (or marginalist) theory of value and distribution, and the reconstruction of economic theory along the lines of the Classical approach. Divided into three volumes, "Sraffa and the Reconstruction of Economic Theory" debates the most fruitful routes for advancement in this field and their implications for applied and policy analysis.
This first volumes focuses on the critique of general equilibrium theory and the determinants of income distribution, together with the related issue of the method of analysis which characterises the Classical theory and the marginalist approach.

First published in 1964, The Economic Development of South-East Asia: Studies in economic history and political economy contains eight papers originally written for a study group at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. The papers, edited by Professor C. D. Cowan, are written against a background of economic underdevelopment in large parts of Asia. Economic problems increasingly plagued the governments of Asia after the Second World War, and while Western governments were willing to help foster economic development, relations with Asian governments were somewhat hindered by the heritage of their colonial past. Problems also related to the growth of traditional trading ports and export crops, and to the importation of colonial regimes, western funds and skills in the nineteenth century. Such developments come under the loosely generalised concept of imperialism, with its strongly emotional overtones, whose use impedes the objective assessment and analysis of facts. While we understand a good deal about conditions of economic growth in the West, much of what has fostered or retarded growth in other parts of the world remains less clear.

This book examines the causes of the economic and political crisis in Argentina in 2001 and the process of strong economic recovery. It poses the question of how a country which defaulted on its external loans and was widely criticized by international observers could have succeeded in its growth and development despite this decision in 2002. It examines this process in terms of the impact of neo-liberal policies on the economy and the role of development strategy and the state in recovering from the crisis

Central economic planning is often associated with failed state socialism, and modern capitalism celebrated as its antithesis. This book shows that central planning is not always, or even primarily, a state enterprise, and that the giant industrial corporations that dominated the American economy through the twentieth century were, first and foremost, unprecedented examples of successful, consensual central planning at a very large scale.

The growth of serious interest during the last fifty years in the scholastic contribution to the development of economic thought has been very marked, and no-where more so than in the history of economic thought in Spain. This book begins in the Middle Ages and traces the effect on business practice and on thought of the presence of the Christian, Islamic and Jewish communities who lived side by side in the Peninsula. It shows how the economics of Plato and Aristotle were transmitted by way of Toledo to the Latin West. In the second half of the book the author considers 'Salamancan' ideas and the views of the political economists and 'projectors' who preceded the Enlightenment. At the same time she surveys the present state of the subject and offers bibliographical guidance for the reader.

Both Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping drastically altered the course of contemporary China's economic development using opposing strategies. Mao froze China's economic system in a perennial state of consumer goods shortages and pervasive macro disequilibria. Deng, however, began thawing a rigidly structured system by introducing experimental reform measures. Mao's revolutionary rhetoric brought China's economy to the brink of bankruptcy. Deng's ideological pragmatism netted China glowing successes. Mao closed China to the outside world. Deng engineered China's reintegration into the world economy.

Dismantling a dysfunctional system and replacing it with a dynamic new one involving 1.2 billion people is risk-laden. Reform in China began in 1978. It was tentative and experimental, confining reform to organizational and administrative decentralization on farms. Successes on farms ushered in reform elsewhere in the economy. Over time, market-based coordinating mechanisms progressively began replacing the systeM's control devices. Results from decentralization internally reinforced those from liberalization externally. This consequently transformed China's stale, distorted system into a more competitive, bustling new one ready for developmental takeoff. Its meteoric rise among the world's leading markets in recent years has thrust China's economy to the forefront of growth and development. Controlled, phased reform is yielding dividends, not only for its own consumers but for international economic cooperation and growth as well.

This book is an investigation into the economic policy formulation and practice of neoliberalism in Britain from the 1950s through to the financial crisis and economic downturn that began in 2007-8. It demonstrates that influential economists, such as F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman, authors at key British think tanks such as the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Centre for Policy Studies, and important political figures of the Thatcher and New Labour governments shared a similar conception of the consumer.

For neoliberals, the idea that consumers were weak in the face of businesses and large corporations was almost offensive. Instead, consumers were imagined to be sovereign agents in the economy, whose consumption decisions played a central role in the construction of their human capital and in the enabling of their aspirations. Consumption, just like production, came to be viewed as an enterprising and entrepreneurial activity. Consequently, from the early 1980s until the present day, it was felt necessary that banks should have the freedom to meet the borrowing needs of consumers. Credit rationing would be a thing of the past. Just like businesses, consumers and households could use debt to expand their stock of personal assets.

By utilizing the method of French philosopher Michel Foucault this book provides an original analysis of the policy ideas and political speeches of key figures in the New Right, in government and at the Bank of England. And it addresses the key question as to why policy-makers both in Britain and the United States did little or nothing to stem rising consumer and household indebtedness, instead always choosing to see increasing house prices and homeownership as a positive to be encouraged.

While marriages were supposed to be celebrated publicly by priests, in churches where the parties were known, many couples had reasons -- among them parental disapproval, religious nonconformity, property considerations and previous entanglements -- to marry in other ways. Nor was this difficult where there was no unified marriage code, where a simple exchange of vows might constitute a valid marriage, and where unbeneficed priests were prepared to perform the ceremony in return for a drink.
Clandestine marriage had represented a problem to the church and state, and to the rights of property, since the middle ages, eluding a variety of attempts to control it. By the eighteenth century it had become a scandal, with Fleet parsons marrying thousands of couples a year. In 1753 Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act nullified such irregular marriages, only to drive them to adopt other guises until the introduction of civil marriage in 1836.
In this intriguing book Brian Outhwaite explores the nature and scale of clandestine marriage. He describes why it attracted so many customers and why it was so hard to suppress. "Clandestine Marriage in England, 1500-1850" provides a new perspective on a central social and religious institution.

The wealth of the Central European archives, particularly in urban records, has not been fully realised by Western European historians. However, the records are not always straightforward to use and many studies tackle the methodological problems inherent in gathering and analysing medieval sources. This book presents an original review of past and present research of national historiographies on medieval financial history from Central Europe. Covering material ranging from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, it explores the eastern regions of the Holy Roman Empire, including Bohemia, Silesia, Austria and Germany, and extending to Poland and Hungary. The authors firstly discuss the monetary policy of the Holy Roman emperors during the Middle Ages, before moving on to wider aspects of state finance, including credit mechanisms used by rulers. The book then investigates civic records and what they reveal about urban life and trade. It lastly investigates the financial activities of the church, from papacy to the cathedral chapters in Prague. Using numismatic and documentary evidence, Money and Finance in Central Europe during the Later Middle Ages provides an invaluable point of comparison with the financial conditions in Western Europe during the Middle Ages.

This volume deals with issues of widespread interest including, the origins of investor rights in different markets, the political, legal and economic conditions that determine levels of shareholder participation, and the implications of variation in investor rights.

First published in 1979, The Transformation of England discusses the creation in late eighteenth century England of the industrial system and thereby the present world. Professor Mathias poses questions about the nature of industrialization, social change and historical explanation, issues that are his principal scholarly concern. This series of essays is divided into two groups. The first group of essays focuses upon general themes such as the 'uniqueness' in Europe of the industrial revolution, capital formation, taxation, the growth of skills, science and technical change, leisure and wages, and diagnoses of poverty. In the second section, Professor Mathias focuses on the social structure in the eighteenth century, considering the industrialization of brewing, coinage, agriculture and the drink industries, advances in public health and the armed forces, British and American public finance in the War of Independence, Dr Johnson and the business world.

F.A. Hayek (1899-1992) was a Nobel Prize winning economist, famous for his defense against classical liberalism. This volume xamines Hayek's relationship with the Chicago School, and looks at The Consitution of Liberty - Hayek's vision of the wealthy. The study highlights the paradox that arises from the spontaneous order of trade unions.

This book uses an institutional-evolutionary approach to analyse economic problems associated with developments in capitalism during the second half of the twentieth century. It argues that economics should centre on institutions - the durable fabric of the economy over time.Drawing on the foundations of Marxist and institutional political economy, the book traces the lineages of institutional themes, as well as considering feminist, post-Keynesian, holistic economics and Schumpeterian perspectives. The nature of institutions in the growth and instability of capitalism is then explored with reference to social structures of accumulation. Particular reference is given to the world economy, the family, the Keynesian welfare state and neo-liberalism, Fordism, the flexible mode of accumulation, and financial regulation and deregulation. The author concludes, using institutional-evolutionary themes of political economy, that the evolution of modern capitalism is likely to be unstable as we move into the next century.

This book examines emerging methodologies and conceptual debates within the environmental history of Latin America. Issues addressed include the territorial expansion of the state and its impact on environmental resources and indigenous populations; environmental transformation (lake-drainage projects in central Mexico, the expansion of sugar-cane production in Cuba, and soil-sedimentation issues); and landscape "improvements" brought about by technological change (banana-breeding schemes, the breeding of Zebu cattle in central Brazil, and the introduction of plants to South America). This volume places the specific case-studies within the field's main themes, and relates them to similar historic environmental developments in North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Contributors include Stephen Bell (UCLA, USA), Reinaldo Funes Monzote (Fundacion Antonio Nunez Jimenez de la Naturaleza y el Hombre, Cuba), Stefania Gallini (Universidad Nacional, Colombia), Nikolas Kozloff (CUNY Brooklyn College, USA), Karl Offen (University of Oklahoma, USA), John Soluri (Carnegie-Mellon University, USA), Alejandro Tortolero Villasenor (Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana-Iztapalapa, Mexico), and Robert W. Wilcox (Northern Kentucky University, USA).

First published in 1952, this work is a systematic exposition of Professor Meade's geometric method, bringing together into a single coherent account the modern geometrical analysis of the theory of international trade. The work makes a number of original contributions, notably in the geometrical treatment of domestic production, of the balance of payments, and of import and export duties.

First published in 1964, this is a study of the extreme inequalities in the ownership of property, in economies across the globe. Professor Meade examines in depth the economic, demographic and social factors which lead to such inequalities. He considers a wide range of remedial policies - educational development, reformed death duties and capital taxes, demographic policies, trade union action, the socialization of property, the development of a property-owning democracy, the expansion of the welfare state. The argument is expressed in precise analytical terms, but the main exposition is free of mathematics and technical jargon and is designed for the interested layman as well as the economist.

First published in 1960, this seminal work illuminates the interrelations of the various approaches to the theory of economic growth. Professor Meade seeks to understand the factors which determine the speed of economic growth and outlines the ways in which classical economic analysis may be developed for application to the problem of economic growth.

This is a book about the discovery of macroeconomic ideas and concepts long before the term macroeconomics had been coined. The cast of authors varies from doctors and physicians (Sir William Petty and Francois Quesnay), to philosophers (David Hume and Adam Smith), to bankers (Richard Cantillon and Henry Thornton) to Prime Ministers of France (John Law and Anne Robert Jacques Turgot). These authors had very rich and varied careers and the book invites readers to imagine specific moments in their careers that influenced both their lives and their writings. Building on these events the contributions of each author are outlined and discussed. Examination of their writings show that by the start of the nineteenth century they had left a rich legacy of macroeconomics ranging from the analysis and measurement of national income, the depiction of the circular flow of income, the debate on the role of money in the economy, the way to model the economy, the importance of labour, land and capital, the role of entrepreneurship, the Central Bank as a lender of last resort, and much more.

Anders Chydenius (1729 - 1803) was a contemporary of Adam Smith and a leading classical liberal in Nordic history. Chydenius wrote a remarkable essay containing a very clear exposition of the basic principles of economic liberalism and there can be very little doubt that it would have been a paper of great international fame if it had been published in English at the time he wrote it. In the essay Chydenius comes very close to expressing the famous Smithian metaphor of the invisible hand. This volume brings together Chydenius' contributions to the history of economic thought for the first time. With a biography from Juha Manninen and editorial contributions from academics such as Gustav Bjorkstrand and Bo Lindberg, Routledge are proud to present this valuable work which will doubtless be of great interest to historians of economic thought across the globe.

In Soviet Economy and the War the author presents a concise factual record of Soviet economic developments during a short period. This book outlines the economic planning and performance that accompanied the military training and preparation to meet the onset of Nazism. To some extent complementary to Dobb's Soviet Economy & the War, the author offers detailed studies of a few special aspects of the Soviet Economic System.

This volume consists of lectures and articles by Maurice Dobb selected from among those delivered or written by him during the 1950s and 60s. It includes three lectures delivered at the University of Bologna on 'Some Problems in the History of Capitalism', two lectures on economic development given at the Delhi School of Economics, articles on the theory of development, and a number of articles on various questions of soviet economic planning contributed to specialist journals. The collection ends with a note in retrospect on Marx's Das Kapital published in recognition of the centenary of the appearance of Volume One of that work in 1867.

This book follows on from the author's volume Russian Economic Development and although it encompasses some of the same material it charts the history and progress of the Soviet economy down to the efforts at reconstruction after The Second World War. A new chapter was added which covers the post-war decade from the end of the war to the announcement of the Sixth Year Plan.

Part 1 of this volume analyses the main issues in the theory of Applied Economics. Part 2 surveys the rise of capitalist enterprise and indicates the importance of certain institutions in the growth and working of the economic system at the start of the twentieth century. The concluding chapters stress the relevance of these considerations to the problems facing politicians and administrators.

A study of the American economy from 1929 to 1989 through the analysis of national income statisitics and other data, this book reaches important conclusions regarding the causes of unemployment, the relation of inflation to the stock of liquid assets and the budget deficit, the proportion of the population in poverty, the gap between interest and profit rates, the relation of productivity to income. These conclusions are discussed using graphs and diagrams extensively. By the editor of The Economics of Human Betterment.

After the end of the Cold War, neoliberalism, with its belief in the virtues of markets and competition, seemed to have triumphed. Communism had been defeated – and Friedrich Hayek, the spiritual father of neoliberal economics, had just about lived to see it. But in the decades that followed, Hayek’s disciples knew that they had a problem. The rise of social movements, from civil rights and feminism to environmentalism, were now proving roadblocks in the road to freedom, nurturing a culture of government dependency, public spending, political correctness and special pleading. Neoliberals needed an antidote.

In this illuminating new book, historian Quinn Slobodian reveals how, from the 1990s onwards, neoliberal thinkers turned to nature, in an attempt to roll back social changes and to return to a hierarchy of gender, race and cultural difference. He explores how these thinkers drew on the language of science, from cognitive psychology to genetics, in order to embed the idea of ‘competition’ ever deeper into social life, and to advocate cultural homogeneity as essential for markets to truly work. Reading and misreading the writings of their sages, Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, they forged the alliances with racial psychologists, neoconfederates, ethnonationalists that would become known as the alt-right.

Hayek’s Bastards shows that many contemporary iterations of the Far Right, from Javier Milei to Donald Trump, emerged not in opposition to neoliberalism, but within it. As repellent as their politics may be, these supposed disruptors are not defectors from the neoliberal order, but its latest cheerleaders.