Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Contributors
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Veblen's Contexts: Valdres, Norway and Europe; Filiations of Economics; and Economics for an Age of Crises
- Part One Norwegian Origins and Personal Life
- Part Two American Education
- Part Three Veblen's Politics
- Part Four Veblen's Economics
- 12 Thorstein Veblen: The Father of Evolutionary and Institutional Economics
- 13 Veblen's Words Weighed
- 14 The Great Crash of 2007 Viewed through the Perspective of Veblen's Theory of Business Enterprise, Keynes's Monetary Theory of Production and Minsky's Financial Instability Hypothesis
- 15 Predation from Veblen until Now: Remarks to the Veblen Sesquicentennial Conference
- 16 Capitalising Expectations: Veblen on Consumption, Crises and the Utility of Waste
- 17 Thorstein Veblen: Still Misunderstood, but More Important Now than Ever
- Name Index
- Subject Index
13 - Veblen's Words Weighed
from Part Four - Veblen's Economics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Contributors
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Veblen's Contexts: Valdres, Norway and Europe; Filiations of Economics; and Economics for an Age of Crises
- Part One Norwegian Origins and Personal Life
- Part Two American Education
- Part Three Veblen's Politics
- Part Four Veblen's Economics
- 12 Thorstein Veblen: The Father of Evolutionary and Institutional Economics
- 13 Veblen's Words Weighed
- 14 The Great Crash of 2007 Viewed through the Perspective of Veblen's Theory of Business Enterprise, Keynes's Monetary Theory of Production and Minsky's Financial Instability Hypothesis
- 15 Predation from Veblen until Now: Remarks to the Veblen Sesquicentennial Conference
- 16 Capitalising Expectations: Veblen on Consumption, Crises and the Utility of Waste
- 17 Thorstein Veblen: Still Misunderstood, but More Important Now than Ever
- Name Index
- Subject Index
Summary
Thorstein Veblen made significant contributions to economics. As the father of institutionalism, he was an important critic of capitalism and what he termed neoclassical economics. Interestingly, for an economist, Veblen's style of writing has gained as much attention as his ideas. His writing has been described as biting, ironic and satirical. Some of his phrases, like ‘conspicuous consumption’, have so penetrated our culture that they are familiar even to those who never heard the name Veblen.
Yet some of his phrases are so abstruse that even the economists whom he addressed failed to understand them. For instance, in his essay ‘Why is Economics Not an Evolutionary Science’, he asks,
if we are getting restless under the taxonomy of a monocotyledonous wage doctrine and a cryptogamic theory of interest, with involute, loculicidal, tomentous and moniliform variants, what is the cytoplasm, centrosome, or karyokinetic process to which we may turn, and in which we may find surcease from the metaphysics of normality and the controlling principles?
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Thorstein VeblenEconomics for an Age of Crises, pp. 297 - 302Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2012