Development of Economic Analysis

Now in its seventh edition, Ingrid Rima's classic textbook charts the development of the discipline from the classical age of Plato and Aristotle, through the middle ages to the first flowering of economics as a distinct discipline - the age of Petty, Quesnay and Smith - to the era of classical economics and the marginalist revolution.
The book then goes on to offer extensive coverage of the twentieth century - the rise of Keynesianism, econometrics, the Chicago School and the neoclassical paradigm. The concluding chapters analyze the birth of late twentieth century developments such as game theory, experimental economics and competing schools of economic thought.
This text includes a number of practical features:


a "family tree" at the beginning of each section, illustrating how the different developments within economics are interlinked


the inclusion of readings from the original key texts


a summary and questions to discuss, along with glossaries and suggestions for further reading

This book provides the clearest, most readable guide to economic thought that exists and encourages students to examine the relevance of the discipline's history to contemporary theory.

Ingrid Rima is Professor of Economics at Temple University, Philadelphia, USA.

Part 1: Preclassical Economics, 1. Early Masterworks as a source of Economic Thought, 2. The Origins of Analytic Economics 3. The Transition to Classical Economics, Part II: Classical Economics, 4. Physiocracy: The Beginning of Analytical Economics, 5. Adam Smith: From Moral Philosophy to Political Economy, 6. Thomas Malthus and J. B. Say: The Political Economy of Population Behaviour and Aggregate Demand, 7. David Ricardo: Economic Analysis of the Distributive Shares, 8. Building on Ricardian Foundations: The Mills, W. N. Senior and Charles Babbage, 9. Classical Theory in Review, Part III: The Critics of Classicism. 10. Socialism, Induction, and the Forerunners of Marginalism, 11. Karl Marx: An Inquiry into the "Law of Motion" of the Capitalist System, 12. First-Generation Marginalists: Jevons, Walras and Menger, 13. Second-Generation Marginalists, Part IV: The Neo-classical Tradition, 1980-1945, 14. Alfred Marshall and the Neo-classical Tradition, 15. Chamberlain, Robinson and Other Price Theorists, 16. The "New" Theory of Welfare and Consumer Behavior, 17. Neo-classical Monetary and business-Cycle Theorists, Part V: The Dissent form Neo-classicism, 1890-1945, 18.The Dissent of American Institutionalists, 19. The Economics of Planning: Socialism without Marxism, 20. J. M. Keynes’s Critique of the Mainstream Tradition, 21. Keynes's Theory of Employment, Output and Income, Part VI: Beyond High Theory, 22. The Emergence of Econometrics as a Sister-Discipline of Economics, 23. Neo-Keynesians, Neo-Walrasians and Monetarists, 24. The Analytics of Economic Liberalism: The Theory of Choice, Part VII: Competing Economic Paradigms, 25. From Economic Heterodoxy to Pluralism and the Revival of Political Economy