The Years of High Theory
Invention and Tradition in Economic Thought 1926–1939

A study of the precise nature, structure, presuppositions, language and inter-relations of the economic theories formulated between 1926 and 1939.

G. L. S. Shackle (Author)

9780521274784, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 3 March 1983

338 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.9 cm, 0.43 kg

Even a decade after the end of the 1914–1918 war, economic theory assumed that the world was tranquil and orderly. By 1939 an economic slump without parallel, allied to the re-emergence of military ambition in Europe, had brought economic theorists face to face with reality. In this classic book, first published in 1967, Professor Shackle provides a study, in exact and professional language, of the precise nature, structure, presuppositions, language and inter-relations of the theories which were formulated in these fourteen years - unparalleled in the whole history of economics except perhaps by the years of the Physiocrats and Adam Smith. These theories are not prototypes on the way to something better but are of essential and permanent importance.

1. The origin of theories: a case-study procedure
2. Economic hard times and the riches of ideas
3. Straffa and the state of value theory, 1926
4. Marginal revenue
5. The new establishment in value theory: (i) Mrs Joan Robinson
6. The new establishment in value theory: (ii) Edward Chamberllin
7. The indifference curve
8. Two theories of demand
9. Monetary equilibrium
10. Mydral's analysis
11. To the QJE from chapter 12 of the General Theory
12. The anatomy of the General Theory
13. Spending, saving and demand
14. The multiplier
15. Liquidity performance
16. Formal dynamics: cycles and growth
17. Leontief's tableau économique
18. The landslide of invention
Index.

Subject Areas: Economic theory & philosophy [KCA]