A Brief History of Economics

Citation

Alvey, J.E. (2002), "A Brief History of Economics", International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 29 No. 5, pp. 426-428. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijse.2002.29.5.426.1

This book is designed to be an undergraduate textbook in the history of economic thought/political economy. While the page length may seem excessive, the pages are short and the font size reasonably large. Also Canterbery makes the material easy to grasp, as a rule. The average undergraduate could easily read a chapter a week and most of the book in a semester.

There are 18 chapters in the book, with the early chapters following the conventional pattern of having a chapter largely devoted to a particular thinker, with each proceeding in a chronological manner. There are, for example, chapters on Smith (Ch. 2), Mill (Ch. 5), Marx (Ch. 6), and so on. Later chapters break the pattern; there are chapters on economic growth and technology (Ch. 13), the rise of the casino economy (Ch. 15), and the global economy (Ch. 16). There is also a useful glossary of terms (pp. 425‐40); suggestions for further reading (pp. 441‐58), and a detailed index (pp. 459‐81). There are four tables, two diagrams and about a half dozen fairly simple equations.

This is the third textbook of Canterbery’s that I have used. The first was The Making of Economics (Wadsworth, 1976) when I was an undergraduate student at the University of Queensland, studying a course called “Political economy and comparative economic systems” taught by Alan Duhs. This was an interesting course and the book made a big impression on me. The second Canterbery book that I used was The Literate Economist (Harper Collins College, 1995). This book was recommended to me by Duhs when I asked his advice about a possible textbook after I was put in charge of a similar course at Massey University called “Political economy”). That book is now out of print and has been replaced by the book under review.

There are a number of interesting features in A Brief History of Economics. First, the sub‐title of the book is Artful Approaches to the Dismal Science. The comparison between economic and literary writings continues the strategy adopted in The Literate Economist. Canterbery makes frequent reference to literary writings, as well as the economic theory, that occurred in the same period as an economist under review. A lot of other material relevant to the historical context is also provided.

Second, significant attention is given to the development of macroeconomic theory. Many surveys along the lines of this textbook tend to skip over macroeconomics. Not only does Canterbery discuss mainstream macroeconomics but also non‐mainstream macroeconomics. There is a more thematic treatment of macroeconomics (chapters 9‐13, 15‐16) in this book than in The Literate Economist. Chapter 11, “The many modern Keynesians,” does a good job in indicating the differences between various types of “Keynesians.”

Third, there is a good treatment of the US institutionalists. Chapter 8 is devoted to Veblen, the contemporary social Darwinists, and the changes in the UK and US economies during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Chapter 14 is devoted to the more recent institutionalists: most of the chapter is devoted to J.K. Galbraith and Robert Heilbroner. The discussion of Heilbroner is interesting and was not present in The Literate Economist. Here is one interesting quote from Canterbery’s discussion of Heilbroner, who was taught by Adolph Lowe:

Lowe’s course became the impetus for the first edition of Heilbroner’s classic, The Worldly Philosophers, a book that was to draw – like moths to a candle – many college students into economics. It has sold more than a million copies (p. 335).

The book was first published in 1953 and has gone through many editions since then. Even today, I recommend The Worldly Philosophers as a good preliminary reading book for my graduate course in the history of economic thought.

Fourth, quite a lot of material is provided on the nature of the American, Japanese and world economies and the economic policies of governments (and the US Federal Reserve) adopted in the period of the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations. A lot of data are provided on the post‐war distribution of income and wealth in the USA. Quite a lot of the material on the 1990s was not included in The Literate Economist. Contemporary evaluations are usually controversial and these chapters will be regarded as especially so. The flavour of Canterbery’s commentary is seen in this quotation:

The history of the final quarter of the twentieth century (in the USA) has provided a recipe for not only the reversal in the (desirable) trend toward more income equality since the 1930s, but a shift towards unpardonable wealth inequality (pp. 399‐400, emphasis added).

Fifth, there is a brief discussion in chapter 17 (“Climbing the economist’s mountain of high theory”) of some of the recent contributions to economics, especially to microeconomics. The contributions to equilibrium theory of Arrow and Debreu are mentioned. So too is the work of Nash. An interesting biographical sketch is also provided, based on Sylvia Nasar’s book called A Beautiful Mind. This is timely, given the release of the motion picture which has the same title as Nasar’s book. In the same chapter, Canterbery discusses the alternative approach of Leontief (and Sraffa).

In order to add the new material in A Brief History of Economics, there were some deletions from The Literate Economist. There seems to be a shorter treatment of comparative economic systems, the biblical and pre‐Smithian economic thought, the industrial revolution, and the Austrians than in the earlier book. The reduced treatment of the Austrians is unfortunate but it is balanced somewhat by the treatment given to Joseph Schumpeter, who can be considered as a neo‐Austrian.

The book is highly recommended. It may be that this work will become the logical replacement for Heilbroner’s The Worldly Philosophers as the text recommended by economists (or at least non‐mainstream economists) in order to attract students to the study of economics.