SHORT REVIEWS
| Date | 01 August 1992 |
| Published date | 01 August 1992 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9485.1992.tb00626.x |
.%‘iJtrish
Journal
of
Political
Econoiiiy.
Vol.
39.
No.
3,
Augus
1992
1992
Scottish
Economic
Society
SHORT REVIEWS
JOHN
CREEDY (ed.),
Foundations
of
Economic Thought,
Oxford, Basil
Blackwell,
1990,
pp. xiv+410
f40.00
(cloth).
Fifteen authors have been assembled to
write conceptual histories of thirteen areas
of economics with the aim, of allowing
students to
‘go
back to the beginning’ and
appreciate the foundations
of
a
subject to
some extent already known to them. A
good team with established erudition,
including Mark Casson, David Collard,
Geoff Harcourt and Brian Loasby, ensures
the book has an authority and reliability
sometimes absent from essay collections.
Although not claiming to be an introduc-
tion to economics.
many
of
the chapters
could be used in that way. Most concepts
are explained from first principles (and
more clearly than in many basic text-
books): little mathematics appears in any
of these essays.
The choice
of
topics includes most
modern areas of economics: economic
man, the State and economic activity,
competition, marginalism, value, social
welfare, income and capital, the firm,
productivity, the debt burden, liquidity,
unemployment and equilibrium. More
could have been included, e.g. expecta-
tions, but what is not gleaned from the
highways of the subject creeps in from the
byways of these essays. Most of the contri-
butions are concerned with the origins
of
theories; the absence of a discussion
of
the
origin of economic policy proposals is
regrettable.
In a work
of
this kind, it is necessary
to
establish at the outset what sort of book it
is
to
be, whether a chronological account
of
how concepts have developed
or
an
explanation
of
the premises and reasoning
which has created the conceptual tools
of
modern economics. Most of the authors
use a chronological approach but two
authors are reluctant
to
delve
far
irito
the
past
Cassou’s
‘Economic man’ for the
most part ignores classical discussions
of
the topic; Holcombe’s ‘Social Welfare’ is
little more than a standard introductory
textbook treatment. Obviously, freedom
has to be given to each writer but the
reader feels cheated
if
there is such a
restlessness to rush
to
the present day that
earlier contributions to the subject are
given scant attention. Collard’s chapter on
unemployment gives Ricardo and Malthus
less than
a
page and forgets Say.
Throughout, too few
of
the contributions
of
the Mercantilists, including Petty, are
mentioned; Cantillion is ignored.
It is inevitable to find omissions in a
work
of
such scope and to attack incon-
sistency in the treatment
of
topics; but as
one is left with the overwhelming impres-
sion that this work deserves a wide
audience, not only of students
a
few steps
along the road, but also of specialists
needing more knowledge
of
other sub-
disciplines and non-economists who could
easily use this book as
a
first encounter
with economics, it is only fair to mention
some of the expository peaks of this book.
Reisman’s ‘The State and economic
activity’ is a neat treatment of a vast topic.
Dooley’s brisk separation of discussions
of
value into the origin. measure and regu-
lation of value gives a transparency to
many old obscure debates. Loasby’s
twenty-one-page summary
of
theories
of
the firm
is
a masterpiece of lucidity.
At the end of this collection, the reader
will have a deeper knowledge of the
subject but perhaps could have been
offered more hints as to where the car of
economic science should travel next.
Donald Rutherford
University
of
Edinburgh
ALEC GEE,
The Theory
of
the Spatial
Firm and Industry:
A
Marshallian
Approach,
Hemel Hempstead: Harvester
Wheatsheaf,
1990,
pp. xviii
+
172,
f32.50
(hardback).
This is a book written in the Marshallian
partial
equilibrium tradition, as explored
in its spatial context with notable success
by the likes of Greenhut, Lipsey, Eaton,
Norman, and Gee himself. It does not
have the ambitions
of
the Walrasian
general equilibrium approach to the
location decision, initiated by Samuelson
(AER,
1952)
in its modern form, and
advanced since by Takayama, Judge, and
346
To continue reading
Request your trial