A COMPANION TO THE HISTORY
OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT
Blackwell Companions to Contemporary Economics
The Blackwell Companions to Contemporary Economics are reference volumes
accessible to serious students and yet also containing up-to-date material from
recognized experts in their particular fields. These volumes focus on basic
bread-and-butter issues in economics as well as popular contemporary topics
often not covered in textbooks. Coverage avoids the overly technical, is
concise, clear, and comprehensive. Each Companion features an introductory
essay by the editor, extensive bibliographical reference sections, and
an index.
1 A Companion to Theoretical Econometrics edited by Badi H. Baltagi
2 A Companion to Economic Forecasting edited by Michael P. Clements and
David F. Hendry
3 A Companion to the History of Economic Thought edited by Warren J.
Samuels, Jeff E. Biddle, and John B. Davis
A Companion to
the History of
Economic Thought
Edited by
WARREN J. SAMUELS,
JEFF E. BIDDLE
Michigan State University
JOHN B. DAVIS
Marquette University, Wisconsin
© 2003 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
except for editorial material and organization © 2003 by
Warren J. Samuels, Jeff E. Biddle, and John B. Davis
350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5018, USA
108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK
550 Swanston Street, Carlton South, Melbourne, Victoria 3053, Australia

List of Figures ix
List of Tables x
List of Contributors xi
Preface xv
1 Research Styles in the History of Economic Thought 1
Jeff E. Biddle
PART I HISTORICAL SURVEYS
2 Ancient and Medieval Economics 11
S. Todd Lowry
3 Contributions of Medieval Muslim Scholars to the History of
Economics and their Impact: A Refutation of the Schumpeterian
Great Gap 28
Hamid S. Hosseini
4 Mercantilism 46
Lars G. Magnusson
5 Physiocracy and French Pre-Classical Political Economy 61
Philippe Steiner
6 Pre-Classical Economics in Britain 78
Anthony Brewer
7 Adam Smith (1723–1790): Theories of Political Economy 94
Andrew S. Skinner
vi CONTENTS
8 Classical Economics 112
Denis P. O’Brien
9 Post-Ricardian British Economics, 1830–1870 130
Sandra J. Peart and David M. Levy
10 Karl Marx: His Work and the Major Changes in its Interpretation 148
Geert Reuten
11 The Surplus Interpretation of the Classical Economists 167
Heinz D. Kurz

Kevin D. Hoover
27 The Economic Role of Government in the History of
Economic Thought 428
Steven G. Medema
28 Postwar Heterodox Economics 445
A The Austrian School of Economics: 1950–2000 445
Peter J. Boettke and Peter T. Leeson
B Feminist Economics 454
Janet A. Seiz
C Institutional Economics 462
Geoffrey M. Hodgson
D Post Keynesian Economics 471
Sheila C. Dow
E Radical Political Economy 479
Bruce Pietrykowski
PART II HISTORIOGRAPHY
29 Historiography 491
Matthias Klaes
30 The Sociology of Economics and Scientific Knowledge, and the
History of Economic Thought 507
A. W. Bob Coats
31 Exegesis, Hermeneutics, and Interpretation 523
Ross B. Emmett
32 Textuality and the History of Economics: Intention and Meaning 538
Vivienne Brown
33 Mathematical Modeling as an Exegetical Tool:
Rational Reconstruction 553
A. M. C. Waterman
34 Economic Methodology since Kuhn 571
John B. Davis

University of Birmingham, England. He specializes in the history of economics
and economic methodology.
William J. Barber is Andrews Professor of Economics, Emeritus, at the Wesleyan
University, Connecticut. He specializes in the history of American economics.
Jeff E. Biddle is Professor of Economics at Michigan State University. He special-
izes in the history of economic thought, labor economics, and econometrics.
Mark Blaug is Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Amsterdam
and Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He specializes in meth-
odology and the history of economic thought.
Peter J. Boettke is Deputy Director, The James M. Buchanan Center for Political
Economy, and Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University,
Virginia. He specializes in comparative political economy, market process theory,
the history of economic thought, and methodology.
Anthony Brewer is Professor of the History of Economics at the University of
Bristol, England. He specializes in the history of economics.
Vivienne Brown is Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Social Sciences at The Open
University, England. She specializes in intellectual history, including the history
of economics.
José Luís Cardoso is Professor of Economics at the Technical University of Lisbon,
Portugal. He specializes in the history of economic thought, economic history,
and economic methodology.
A. W. Bob Coats is Emeritus Professor of Economic and Social History at the
University of Nottingham, England. He specializes in the methodology and
history of economic thought.
John B. Davis is Professor of Economics at Marquette University, Wisconsin. He
specializes in the history of economic thought and methodology.
Robert W. Dimand is Professor of Economics at Brock University, St. Catharines,
Ontario, Canada. He specializes in macroeconomics and the history of eco-
nomic thought.
Sheila C. Dow is Professor of Economics at the University of Stirling, Scotland.

and post-Keynesian economics.
J. E. King is Professor of Economics at La Trobe University, Victoria, Australia.
He specializes in the history of economic thought, with special reference to
heterodox schools of thought, Marxian political economy, and post-Keynesian
economics.
Matthias Klaes is Lecturer at the University of Stirling, Scotland. He specializes in
economic methodology, historiography, economy of knowledge and social epis-
temology, and transaction cost theory.
Heinz D. Kurz is Full Professor of Economics at the University of Graz, Austria.
He specializes in economic theory (production, income distribution, technical
change, growth) and the history of economic thought (classical political eco-
nomy, marginalist economics, German–Austrian school).
Peter T. Leeson is a graduate student in the Department of Economics at George
Mason University, Virginia. He is specializing in Austrian economics and
methodology.
xii LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
David M. Levy is Professor of Economics at George Mason University, Virginia.
He specializes in metaeconomics, the history of economics, statistical ethics,
robust regression, and economics and language.
John Lodewijks is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of New
South Wales, Australia. He specializes in the history and methodology of mod-
ern economics.
S. Todd Lowry is Professor of Economics Emeritus at Washington and Lee Uni-
versity, Virginia. He specializes in the history of economic thought, law and
economics, and environmental studies.
Lars G. Magnusson is Professor of Economic History at Uppsala University, Sweden.
He specializes in the history of economic thought and general economic history.
Maria Cristina Marcuzzo is Professor of the History of Economic Thought at the
Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza,” Rome, Italy. She specializes in
classical monetary theory and the Cambridge school of economics.

specializes in the history of economic thought, methodology, and feminist
economics.
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS xiii
Andrew S. Skinner is Adam Smith Professor of Economics Emeritus at the Uni-
versity of Glasgow, Scotland. He specializes in eighteenth-century economic
thought.
Philippe Steiner is Professor of Sociology at the Université de Lille 3, France. He
specializes in the history of economic thought and economic sociology.
Keith Tribe is presently an unaffiliated scholar. He specializes in the history of
European economics, 1600–1950; Max Weber and German economics; and the
formation of economics as a university discipline.
Donald A. Walker is University Professor and Professor of Economics, Emeritus,
at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He specializes in microeconomic
theory and history.
A. M. C. Waterman is Professor of Economics at the University of Manitoba,
Canada. He specializes in the history of economic thought, eighteenth- and
early nineteenth-century economic thought, Malthus, political economy, and
Christian theology.
xiv LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Preface
The purpose of this Companion is threefold: to introduce the history of economic
thought, the interpretive problems facing historians of economic thought, and the
work of historians of economic thought to interested and competent nonspeci-
alists, including other economists, graduate students, advanced undergraduate
students, and lay people (including noneconomists), as well as specialists seeking
a review of a topic.
The design strategy for this Companion is simple and straightforward. The
chapters comprising part I are historical surveys of major topics in the history of
economic thought. Their purpose is to report on the present state of understand-
ing and interpretation of those topics. That there is a history of understanding

lists included in both groups). No single model was imposed on the authors,
although the genre itself conveys some elements of design, and no attempt was
made to enforce the editors’ own views – although such inevitably entered the
design of the volume. Accordingly, some degree of idiosyncracy will be found, as
well as differences of interpretation.
One feature of the collection is the attempt to include aspects of the period fol-
lowing World War II. Indeed, a substantial interpretive literature already exists.
We envision, in the not too distant future, a Companion dealing more or less
exclusively with that period. Yet, as several chapters in this collection reveal, we
are only now achieving meaningful insight into the interwar period. And surely,
by the time a sequel is contemplated, new interpretations of the entire history of
economic thought and new research strategies will have arisen.
One consideration should be understood, that of multiplicity. Clearly, not all his-
torians of economic thought agree with and practice their discipline in the light
of all the positions surveyed in the historiographic chapters of part II. Similarly,
not all historians of economic thought agree with the particular interpretations
necessarily expressed in the chapters of part I. Historians of economic thought
and of economics are much more diverse in their modes of work at the start of
the twenty-first century than their counterparts were at either the beginning of
the twentieth century or during the early postwar period.
The reader should treat these chapters as suggestive, not complete; general,
not fully nuanced; and so on. Every topic is much more complex once you get
into it. One chapter can do only so much. Each is best treated by the reader as a
series of pointers and not a treatise. As definitive as one would prefer the chap-
ters to be, they are best seen as sophisticated introductions – as companions to,
not substitutes for, serious further intellectual effort.
We are appreciative of the hard work and cooperative spirit of the contributors
to this Companion and of the staff of Blackwell Publishing.
WARREN J. SAMUELS, JEFF E. BIDDLE
Michigan State University