History of Economic Thought

This course is an introduction to the history of economic thought. Students should be able to understand how economic theory has been developed. The approach taken is both historical and analytical. The evolution of economic thought is presented as a series of changes in the perception of the nature of socioeconomic process. These changes in the “vision” [in the Schumpeterian sense] of the dominant version of the theory entail each time the construction of new analytical concepts and categories and a new mode of their interaction. The course stresses the historical character of economic theories and the way in which actual socioeconomic phenomena affect the development of economic theory. At the same time the usefulness of different theoretical currents is being discussed, especially in relation to their ability to address the issues of the theory of value and distribution and of contemporary problems, such as unemployment and inequality. Special attention is given to the development of mainstream neoclassical economic theory in order to comprehend and view critically the economic theory that is currently being taught so that it will be seen not as an eternal truth, but as a episode in the history of economic thought.

Objectives

The aim of the course is to enable students to understand how economics has been developed as a science. After the successful completion of the course students are expected to have a better comprehension of economics and its concepts, to know the basic alternative approaches to economics and to adopt a critical stance to alternative economic theories, especially mainstream economics.

Prerequisites

The aim of the course is to enable students to understand how economics has been developed as a science. After the successful completion of the course students are expected to have a better comprehension of economics and its concepts, to know the basic alternative approaches to economics and to adopt a critical stance to alternative economic theories, especially mainstream economics.

Syllabus

1. The methodology of economic science 2. Ancient Greek and scholastic economic thought 3. Mercantilism 4. From Mercantilism to classical political economy, incl. Physiocracy 5. Classical Political Economy: Adam Smith 6. Classical Political Economy: Malthus & Ricardo 7. The critique of the bourgeois political economy: Karl Marx 8. The origins of neoclassical economics: The precursors and the Marginal Revolution 9. The consolidation of neoclassical economics 10. After neoclassical economics, Keynes and Schumpeter