THE CLASSICAL TRADITION IN ECONOMIC THOUGHT

The great tradition of classical economics is an enduring source of inspiration for new research relating to the development of economics as a discipline. This major volume brings together papers which reflect the durability as well as the diversity of classical research themes for historians of economics.Beginning with a re-evaluation of mercantilism, the volume continues with papers on stoicism in the work of Adam Smith, Smith’s use of the word ‘natural’, a game-theoretical evaluation of the Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations, a textual reinterpretation of Smith’s wage theories, and the important role of institutions in J.S. Mill’s economic analysis. The papers in this collection cover both Smithian classicism and the Ricardo - Marx - Sraffa classicism which is represented here by four papers on the work of Krishna Bharadwaj, a persuasive contemporary interpreter of this variant of the classical tradition.

The Classical Tradition in Economic Thought demonstrates that classicism, in all its many faces, is not only alive but generating an ongoing flow of interpretative literature which will be of interest to students and scholars concerned with economic theory and the history of economic thought as well as the heterodox schools in modern economics.