ABSTRACT

An introduction to the life, work and ideas of the people who have shaped the economic landscape from the sixteenth century to the present day. Now in a third edition, it considers how major economists might have viewed challenges such as the continuing economic slump, high unemployment and the sovereign debt problems which face the world today, it includes entries on:

• Paul Krugman

• Hyman Minsky

• John Maynard Keynes

• Adam Smith

• Irving Fisher

• James Buchanan

Fifty Major Economists contains brief biographical information on each featured economist and an explanation of their major contributions to economics, along with simple illustrations of their ideas. With reference to the recent work of living economists, guides to the best of recent scholarship and a glossary of terms, Fifty Major Economists is an ideal resource for students of economics. 

Steven Pressman is Professor of Economics and Finance at Monmouth University. He has published around 120 articles in refereed journals and as book chapters, and has authored, or edited 13 books, including Women in the Age of Economic Transformation, Economics and Its Discontents, Alternative Theories of the State, and Leading Contemporary Economists.

chapter |4 pages

Thomas Mun (1571–1641)

chapter |5 pages

William Petty (1623–87)

chapter |4 pages

Richard Cantillon (1687?–1734?)

chapter |6 pages

François Quesnay (1694–1774)

chapter |4 pages

David Hume (1711–76)

chapter |9 pages

Adam Smith (1723–90)

chapter |4 pages

Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832)

chapter |5 pages

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834)

chapter |8 pages

David Ricardo (1772–1823)

chapter |5 pages

Antoine Augustin Cournot (1801–77)

chapter |5 pages

John Stuart Mill (1806–73)

chapter |8 pages

Karl Marx (1818–83)

chapter |5 pages

Léon Walras (1834–1910)

chapter |5 pages

William Stanley Jevons (1835–82)

chapter |6 pages

Carl Menger (1840−1921)

chapter |8 pages

Alfred Marshall (1842–1924)

chapter |6 pages

Francis Ysidro Edgeworth (1845–1926)

chapter |6 pages

John Bates Clark (1847–1938)

chapter |6 pages

Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923)

chapter |5 pages

Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk (1851–1914)

chapter |6 pages

Knut Wicksell (1851–1926)

chapter |5 pages

Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929)

chapter |6 pages

Irving Fisher (1867–1947)

chapter |6 pages

Arthur Cecil Pigou (1877–1959)

chapter |8 pages

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946)

chapter |5 pages

Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950)

chapter |6 pages

Piero Sraffa (1898–1983)

chapter |5 pages

Gunnar Myrdal (1898–1987)

chapter |7 pages

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992)

chapter |6 pages

Simon Kuznets (1901–85)

chapter |7 pages

John von Neumann (1903–57)

chapter |6 pages

Joan Robinson (1903–83)

chapter |7 pages

Jan Tinbergen (1903–94)

chapter |9 pages

John Hicks (1904–89)

chapter |5 pages

Wassily Leontief (1906–99)

chapter |6 pages

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006)

chapter |8 pages

Milton Friedman (1912–2006)

chapter |7 pages

Paul Samuelson (1915–2009)

chapter |5 pages

Franco Modigliani (1918–2003)

chapter |6 pages

James M. Buchanan (1919–2013)

chapter |7 pages

Hyman Minsky (1919–96)

chapter |6 pages

Douglass Cecil North (1920—)

chapter |6 pages

Kenneth J. Arrow (1921—)

chapter |6 pages

Barbara R. Bergmann (1927—)

chapter |5 pages

Gary Becker (1930—)

chapter |7 pages

Amartya Sen (1933—)

chapter |7 pages

Daniel Kahneman (1934—)

chapter |6 pages

Robert E. Lucas, Jr. (1937—)

chapter |7 pages

Joseph Stiglitz (1943—)

chapter |12 pages

Paul Krugman (1953—)