The history of economics, properly read, is very much a history of economics in the public sphere. Sir William Petty developed his most important insights in the process of providing advice on taxation to the monarch. Adam Smith wrote with a view to influencing the habits of thought of both the educated layman and policy makers. Jane Marcet and Harriet Martineau brought early classical political economy to the masses. David Ricardo formulated foundational elements of the nineteenth-century classical system writing policy pamphlets and then entered Parliament with a view to putting policy making on a solid economic footing. Karl Marx’s intended audience was anything but the practitioners of the emerging science of political economy. Alfred Marshall buried his technical analysis in appendices to maximize the exposure of his work. John Maynard Keynes’s influence can be ascribed, without too much injustice, as much to his effectiveness outside the walls of Cambridge as within them and to the use by others of his ideas in that same public realm. Yet, despite this lengthy history of economists’ engagements with various publics, including those pulling the levers of policy, those writing on the history of economics have focused far more intently on the history of theory and the implications for the construction of a body of thought known as “economic analysis” than on the interplay among economists, economic ideas, and the public realm. It is as if the economic conversation went on solely within the space of academic departments of economics, even though those spaces are very recent creations.

The manuscript collection of the National Library of Scotland contains two undergraduate essays in “political economy” written for the Rev. Thomas Chalmers while he was Professor of Moral Philosophy at St Andrews University from 1823 to 1828. The first is signed “Pat. J. Stirling.” The second is unsigned, but is in the same hand. The Library attributes both manuscripts to Patrick James Stirling (1809–1891). The essays are marked with deletions and insertions, most of which appear to be by Stirling himself, and the summary appraisal at the end of each in Chalmers's own hand is signed “Thomas Chalmers.” In the transcription of the shorter essay printed in section VI below, [bracketed] words are those which have been deleted. Underlined words are those inserted by Stirling or possibly Chalmers. Stirling's erratic capitalization and hyphenation, and the indentation of his first paragraph, have been preserved.

I was born in Windsor, Ontario on 25 May 1943, the first child of William Robert Moggridge and Doris Livingston Moggridge. The surname Moggridge comes from Celtic Devon. Add in Livingston and my maternal grandmother's Lennox, the Celtic tinge gets stronger. The Hulls on my paternal grandmother's side reduce it, but there were Camerons in that gene pool. Both of my parents were University of Toronto graduates: my father in Metallurgical Engineering (1934) and my mother in Honours Philosophy and English (1933) and Library Science (1934).

This paper considers the distinction made by David Ricardo between “permanent” and “temporary” causes, which he sometimes refers to also as “stable” and “accidental” causes (see The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo [hereinafter Works] I: 86, 88, 92; VI: 154), to derive implications useful to distinguish his approach from subsequent developments of the notions of short-period and long-period equilibrium. In particular, I trace the change of focus in the concept of “permanent” forces brought about by Alfred Marshall—from whose insights Alfred Kahn and John Maynard Keynes drew inspiration for their short-period analysis—which paved the way to fundamental changes in the method and theory.

It is argued that Ricardo’s distinction maintains an heuristic value, in particular vis-à-vis the distinction between short and long period, which is part of the common language in standard economics.

This paper examines the arguments of Colonel Robert Torrens against the hypothetical prospect that rising corn prices might result in higher farmers’ profits by reducing the real costs of manufactured articles used in the crop-growing activity. First, it shows how this idea evolved through time in Malthus’ writings on rent. Next, it scrutinizes Torrens’ approach to the subject of value, from its origins to the more elaborate version built up in some of his early inquiries regarding political economy. The outcome of his effort was a simplified image of the mutual interaction among the productive sectors, similar to modern input–output models, composed of an interdependent system with prices and a uniform profit rate determined simultaneously. Finally, some applications for this innovative analytical device are presented, but with an emphasis on the refutation of Malthus’ proposition. The concluding remarks stress Torrens’ ability to devise a proper quantitative answer to the parson’s theoretical challenge despite the scanty technical resources available to classical economists at that time.

Historians of economics rarely consider textbooks as more than passive receptacles of previously validated knowledge. Therefore, their active role in shaping the discipline and its image is seldom addressed. In this paper, I study the making of Paul Samuelson’s successive editions of Economics from 1967 to 1973 as an instance of how textbooks stand at the crossroads between disciplinary knowledge, pedagogy, and larger political and societal concerns. In the mid-1960s, Economics, now at its sixth edition, was at the height of its success. Considered one cornerstone of modern economics, it was also at the center of a number of criticisms dealing with the current state of the economic discipline and its teaching in the universities. While the profession expressed its concern over the lack of relevance of economics to address the pressing issues of the day and pleaded for a new “problem-solving” approach to economic education, the late 1960s witnessed the emergence of a new generation of “radical” economists criticizing the economics orthodoxy. Their contention that mainstream theory had neglected the issues of class struggle and capitalist exploitation found a favorable echo among an increasingly politicized population. Using archival materials, I show how Samuelson, helped by his editorial team at McGraw-Hill, attempted to take into account these changes in order to ensure the continuing success of subsequent editions of his text in an increasingly competitive market. This study emphasizes Samuelson’s ambiguous attitude toward his contenders, revealing, on the one hand, his apparent openness to discussion and outsiders’ suggestions, and, on the other hand, his firm attachment to mildly liberal politics and aversion to Marxism, unchanged through revisions. It also helps refine a notion that is often invoked but never fully expounded in textbook studies: that of the audience.

Henry George, self-taught economist to the common man, developed a strong following outside the halls of academic discourse for his ideas about land, rent, and the single tax. Since he drew the ire of important economists such as John Bates Clark and Alfred Marshall, it should come as no surprise that few professional economists were willing to acknowledge his influence on the economics of the day. Yet, a closer look reveals that at least in the case of Thorstein Veblen, a clear connection can be made between these two important American thinkers. The concept of an unearned increment establishes their shared connection by illustrating the tension that exists between individuals and communities when individual property rights are assigned to community assets.

Sir William Petty (1623–1687) is generally known to historians of economic thought as an early contributor to classical political economy. In fact, Karl Marx claimed—rightly, I believe—that Petty was the founder of that school of thought (Marx 1867, p. 81). Frank Amati and Tony Aspromourgos echo the sentiment that Petty, and not Adam Smith, was “the founder of classical political economy, that school which had its culmination in the Ricardian economic theory” (Amati and Aspromourgos 1985, p. 127). Aspromourgos has also observed that Petty wrote A Treatise of Taxes and Contributions, as well as other works, in order to provide “an answer to the questions of how to maximize total employment and surplus labour, and how to best utilize surplus labour” (Aspromourgos 1996, p. 16, emphasis added).

The British public debt grew to unprecedented levels during the course of the Napoleonic Wars, and the debt service burden, aggravated by deflation, was reaching alarming heights in the postwar period, absorbing over half of all tax revenue. David Ricardo was prompted by economic analysis and existing circumstances to advocate the rapid redemption of existing public debt by means of a “capital levy,” a one-time tax on the nation's property. In print, he advocated the proposal in “The Funding System,” an entry in a supplementary volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica published in 1820, in which he wrote that “by one great effort, we should get rid of one of the most terrible scourges which was ever invented to afflict a nation” (Ricardo 1951–73, IV, p. 197).

John Stuart Mill’s involvement with the Land Question in Ireland is analyzed from the viewpoint of his theory of institutions. I argue that, for Mill, institutions should promote progress without endangering social order. When referring to economic institutions, “progress” meant, essentially, human improvement, a rise in economic productivity, and the increase of social justice. According to Mill, the cottier system did not fulfill any of these requisites and should be abandoned. Mill also rejected transposing to Ireland the “English model” of capitalist agriculture. This institution could eventually solve the economic problem but involved the unjust eviction of tenants and would not regenerate the Irish character. Given the particularities of Ireland, Mill endorsed peasant property as the most suitable form of land appropriation. It would, at the same time, improve the character of the people, enhance productivity, and increase the social justice of the system. It would also mitigate the conflicts that jeopardized social order.

In 1954 the American Economic Association held its first session on “The International Flow of Economic Ideas.” As a discussant, the great scholar of Walras, William Jafft said, “The Iron and Bamboo Curtains of today were preceded three-quarters of a century ago by nationalistic, linguistic, and other curtains–all impending the free flow of ideas in the learned world,” (1955, 38–9). A.W. Coats later added some other obstacles, “…the unavailability of modern information retrieval methods, or perhaps a plain ornery human unwillingness to cooperate or personal dislike, all have at times been impediments to the progress of knowledge,” (1987, 66).

This paper deals with a debate among Ralph George Hawtrey, John Richard Hicks, and John Maynard Keynes concerning the capacity of the central bank to influence the short-term and the long-term rates of interest. Both Hawtrey and Keynes considered the central bank’s ability to influence short-term rates of interest. However, they do not put the same emphasis on the study of the long-term rates of interest. According to Keynes, long-term rates are influenced by future expected short-term rates (1930, 1936), whereas for Hawtrey ([1932] 1962, 1937, 1938), long-term rates are more dependent on the business cycle. Short-term rates do not have much effect on long-term rates, according to Hawtrey. In 1939, Hicks enters the controversy, giving credit to both Hawtrey’s and Keynes’s theories, and also introducing limits to the operations of arbitrage. He thus presented a nuanced view.

The last decade has seen an outburst of growth models designed to replace the conventional Solow growth model, with its exogenous trend of technical progress, by more realistic models that generate increasing returns (to labor, capital and/or scale) as a result of endogenous technical progress. In contrast to the Solow model, the new models suggest that policy interventions can affect the long-run rate of economic growth. Nicholas Kaldor's growth model, designed in the late 1950s and early 1960s to replace the Solow growth model, is a precursor of the new growth models.

In a recent article Luca Fiorito and Cosma Orsi accused John R. Commons of anti-Semitism “within a broad and xenophobic framework.” They rested their indictment on three sources: an interview in which Mark Perlman spoke of his father, Selig; Commons’s report on immigration for the United States Industrial Commission; and Commons’s book Races and Immigrants. This comment, looking at the same sources, finds confusion about the meanings of anti-Semitism and xenophobia as they are applied to Commons.