Customer Reviews

Historians of Economics and Economic Thought (Routledge Studies in the History of Economics)

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This book is a collection of essays written by historians of economic thought and economic history about the contributions of other historians of economic thought and history. I will base my review on the ability of the essayists to cover the technical analysis contained in J M Keynes's 1936 General Theory.One article on Mark Blaug attempts to deal with Blaug's assessment of the GT.The GT is evaluated as if it were some piece of old English literature instead of the theoretical analysis of the greatest economist of the 20th century.None of the other remaining essay writers ,nor any of the subjects of the essays ,have any idea about what Keynes's General Theory is about.One could have hoped that at least one historian of economic thought or economic history would have been able to have covered pp. 493-528 of Volume 13 of the CWJMK that covered the Feb.-Mar.,1935 exchange between J M Keynes and Dennis Robertson over the GT.One could have hoped that at least one historian would have stumbled over Keynes's explicit statement on pp.513-514 that Keynes's technical analysis is in a chapter dealing with The Employment Function.One could have hoped that at least one historian would have been intrigued by the title of chapter 20 of the GT ,which is called "The Employment Function".The answer is that none of the esaays in this book or the subjects of the essays has any idea about what Keynes accomplished in 1936.

The cost of the book ,$200.00,is outrageous.The very poor quality of the scholarship means that no one should buy this book.