Seminar paper from the year 2024 in the subject Business economics - Miscellaneous, Addis Ababa University (Business and Economics), course: development theory, language: English, abstract: The classical school of economic thought began taking shape in the late 18th century, led by Scottish philosopher Adam Smith. In his groundbreaking book The Wealth of Nations published in 1776, Smith introduced several foundational concepts that came to define early classical theory. He observed the immense productive gains achieved through the division of labor in a pin factory, recognizing specialization as a primary driver of economic progress (Smith, 1776). Moreover, Smith theorized his famous metaphor of the "invisible hand”, suggesting that through unhindered individual self-interest and competition in a free market, social welfare is indirectly maximized (Smith, 1776). In the early 19th century, English political economist David Ricardo built significantly upon Smith's foundations. His 1817 work On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation proposed the influential labor theory of value. Ricardo argued that the cost of production, and therefore the true value, of a good or service is determined by the quantity of labor required to produce it (Ricardo, 1821). He also formulated the principle of comparative advantage to explain patterns of international trade. During this period, Reverend Thomas Malthus published his Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798. In it, he contended that human populations tended to grow at a faster rate than the food supply, potentially resulting in recurrent famines unless checks like disease, war, or birth control intervene (Malthus, 1798 ).

This book is the first to reinterpret John R. Commons's Institutional Economics with a newly discovered manuscript written in 1927 in order to find its contemporary meanings in economic theories. Commons aimed to establish institutional economics to understand capitalism in the USA of that time, when people’s collective actions were gaining importance with the emergence of powerful labor unions, oligopolistic corporations, and national judicial systems. Setting three types of transactions as his central concepts for analysis, Commons described dynamics of capitalism as multiple and cumulative causal processes of transactions, through which the final goal should be achievements of a "reasonable value". He also believed that the reasonable value could be achieved by the evolution of institutions. There is no doubt that Commons's ideas proposed in Institutional Economics such as transactions and collective actions greatly inspired later economists; however, few studies have contributed to comprehensive understanding of the origin of his masterpiece. To what extent and in what sense had Commons rejected or accepted previous classical economics or marginalism for constituting his original institutional economics? What are the meanings and limitations that reasonable value may have for contemporary political economy? Institutional Economics as attempts to resolve deep economic problems at that time. Commons's efforts create important implications for us, those who are living in an era after the global financial crisis and confronting various challenges to political economy.

. . . the book is excellent in setting out and explaining a fundamental critique of economics one moreover that has been missed by most other current critics of the field. Making this case is an achievement. Hopefully, it will have a greater impact than its author probably expects. Journal of Cultural Economics Economics evolved by perfecting the taking of culture out of its reductionist and virtual world. But culture has recently been reintroduced, both as a sphere of application for an otherwise unchanging methodology and as a weak form of acknowledging that the economic alone is inadequate as the basis even for explaining the economy. This volume is an essential critical starting point for understanding the changing relationship between economics and culture and in offering a more satisfactory and stable union between the two. Ben Fine, University of London, UK Economics, Culture and Social Theory examines how culture has been neglected in economic theorising and considers how economics could benefit by incorporating ideas from social and cultural theory. Orthodox economics has prompted a long line of cultural criticism that goes back to the origins of economic theory and extends to recent debates surrounding postmodernism. William A. Jackson discusses the cultural critique of economics, identifies the main arguments, and assesses their implications. Among the topics covered are relativism and realism, idealism and materialism, agency and structure, hermeneutics, semiotics, and cultural evolution. Drawing from varied literatures, notably social and cultural theory, the book stresses the importance of culture for economic behaviour and looks at the prospects for a renewed and culturally informed economics. The book will be invaluable to heterodox economists and to anyone interested in the links between culture and the economy. It takes an interdisciplinary approach, arguing against the isolation of economics, and will therefore hold wide appeal for social scientists working in related fields, as well as for economists specialising in cultural economics and economic methodology.

The financial crisis and the economic crisis that followed triggered a crisis in the subject of economics, as it is typically being taught today especially in macroeconomics and related fields. A renewed interest in earlier authors, especially the classical economists from Adam Smith to David Ricardo and John Maynard Keynes, developed. This book may also be seen as a response to this interest. What can we learn from the authors mentioned, what we could not learn from the mainstream? This volume contains a selection of essays which deepens and widens the understanding of the classical approach to important problems, such as value and distribution, growth and technical progress, and exhaustible natural resources. It is the fourth collection in a row and reflects an on-going discussion of the fecundity of the classical approach. A main topic of the essays is a comparison between the classical approaches with modern theory and thus an identification of what can be learned by elaborating on the ideas of Smith and Ricardo and Marx above and beyond and variously in contradiction to certain mainstream view. Since the work of Piero Sraffa spurred the revival of classical economic thought, his contributions are dealt with in some detail. The attention then focuses on economic growth and the treatment of exhaustible resources within a classical framework of the analysis.

The role of the German Historical School and of Carl Menger (founder of the Austrian School) is appraised in this new book. This important period of the history of economics is vital to understand how the discipline developed over the next half-century. Gilles Campagnolo has produced an impressive original work which makes use of rarely seen research by Carl Menger and as such this book will be of interest across several discplines, including history of economic thought, economic methodology, philosophy of science and the history of ideas.

This book provides a comprehensive coverage of the origin and development of economic thought from the ancient times to the present day. It documents the contributions of major thinkers from the time of Hebrews to Maurice Dobb, and the perspectives that influenced the economic thought. The book also provides an account of the recent trends in Indian economic thought and will be of interest and relevance to all students and scholars of the subject. It covers the syllabus of economic thought of major Indian universities.