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326 results in Economic thought, philosophy and methodology

Page 1 of 17

Pluralism and Complexity
  • Tolerance and Dialogue in Economics and Other Empirical Sciences
  • Alessandro Vercelli
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    October 2026
    Print publication:
    31 October 2026
  • Pluralism in economics is the view that modern approaches to studying economic phenomena are too restrictive. It is an important issue within the development of the discipline as many approaches that were once deemed to be outside the mainstream have now become part of the consensus, e.g. game theory, behavioural economics, and information economics. Pluralism and Complexity explores the philosophical background to pluralism and shows how this can be applied to modern economics. It examines key moments like the Keynesian Revolution and the New Classical counter-revolution to show how different 'epistemic visions' arise from fundamentally different ways of handling and simplifying complexity. Examining the history of aggregate economic analysis, this book argues that the propagation of a dogmatic view of science by political and self-interested elites creates a severe deficit of pluralism in macroeconomic research and offers suggestions for reversing this dangerous trend in economics and beyond.

Tools of Trust
  • Business Forecasting in the Twentieth Century
  • Laetitia Lenel
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    July 2026
    Print publication:
    31 July 2026
  • How is it possible that economists generally fail to foresee recession, yet forecasting has never lost its appeal and importance? Using a combination of published scientific and technical literature, newspaper articles as well as archival material from thirty-three research sites in six countries, Tools of Trust looks for an answer to this question. It tells the history of business forecasting in the twentieth century, tracing the emergence and fundamental transformations of forecasting techniques and their role in economic and political decision-making. It investigates how the role of business forecasting has changed and how this has transformed economic and political decision-making. Offering a nuanced understanding of the crucial role forecasting plays in managing economic uncertainty, this book examines how unforeseen economic crises have paradoxically reinforced the importance of forecasting, turning it into an indispensable tool to reduce economic uncertainty and stabilize the capitalist order.

Enterprise and Integration
  • Big Business and the Making of the Single European Market
  • Grace Ballor
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    July 2026
    Print publication:
    31 July 2026
  • In post-Brexit Europe, it has never been more important to understand who benefits from the European Union and its Single Market. In this innovative approach to the history of European integration, Grace Ballor reconstructs the creation of the Single Market in the 1980s and 1990s through the lens of multinational business. She both shows how policymakers viewed big business as an ally in market integration and uncovers the diverse responses of European companies, ranging from enthusiastic support for the market to opposition to its attendant social and environmental policies. Drawing on institutional and corporate archives and interviews with key policymakers and business leaders, Ballor demonstrates how businesses adapted their strategies to the new realities of integration and how these adaptations in turn shaped international markets. This is essential reading for anyone wishing to make sense of contemporary European economics and the complex relationships between business and policymaking, economy and society.

A Labour Theory of Value
  • Luigi L. Pasinetti
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    July 2026
    Print publication:
    31 July 2026
  • Luigi L. Pasinetti was one of the most significant figures in the history of post-Keynesian economics. In his final book, he reflects on the history and future of post-Keynesian economics, as well as a broad range of issues relating to his previous work. He argues that the economics profession has reached a critical impasse, unable to grasp the true nature of the unprecedented world we now inhabit. He examines how modern economic thought has diverged from addressing real-world challenges, challenging outdated frameworks to offer, instead, a path for reflection and reorientation. With a rigorous critique of prevailing paradigms, Pasinetti proposes an alternative framework of analysis extending an invitation for economists to rethink foundational assumptions. Providing his final statement on these issues, this book delivers a compelling critique of the current state of economics and political economy and offers a vital contribution for reimagining these disciplines in extraordinary times.

Jobless Growth and the New Great Transformation
  • A Data Driven Analysis
  • Mauro Gallegati, Enzo Valentini, Fabiano Compagnucci, Andrea Gentili
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    June 2026
    Print publication:
    30 June 2026
  • Technological change and innovation have long fueled economic growth and employment. Yet, in recent decades, productivity gains have increasingly failed to translate into more jobs and higher wages. Jobless Growth and the New Great Transformation investigates this apparent paradox, by examining the theoretical and empirical evidence about the relationship between innovation and structural change. It combines rigorous and cutting-edge data analysis with EU case studies to reveal how recent technological breakthroughs, far from driving shared prosperity, have slowed growth, widened spatial divides and fueled societal polarization, partly due to excessive confidence in market deregulation. Drawing on data-driven analyses, the book explains why impacts of innovation vary so widely between regions and how history, institutions, and policy-not just market forces-determine who benefits from technological advances and who is left behind.

Industrial Development and Division of Labour
  • A History of Analysis
  • P. Sai-wing Ho
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    April 2026
    Print publication:
    21 May 2026
  • A country's industrial policy aims at promoting the development of sectors that often relate to manufacturing and is especially important for less-developed countries as they seek to catch up economically. Industrial Development and Division of Labor re-examines the long history behind the debate on its formulation and organises the discussion around the two types of division of labour found in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. One type has evolved to become the neoclassical perspective and its notion of market failure that has heavily skewed the debate's history. Noting its limitations, including the simplified catch-up learning that is conceived, this book illustrates that arguments for industrial policy that are rejected by Neoclassical economists – so-called 'protectionist' and import-substituting ones – and newer notions involving innovation systems actually share roots with Smith's other type of labour division. They offer broader perspectives on policy that call for establishing elaborate interactive contexts for learning for development.

Reclaiming economics for future generations
  • Lucy Ambler, Joe Earle, Nicola Scott
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    24 February 2026
  • Today, in many countries what is viewed as ‘credible’ economic knowledge stems from academic economics. The discipline of academic economics is based in universities across the world that employ economists who produce research that is published in academic journals and educate students who then go into government, businesses, and think tanks. Through the book’s authors’ and contributors’ experiences of economics education, and as part of the international student movement Rethinking Economics, it argues that academic economics in its current state does not provide people with the knowledge that we need to build thriving economies that allows everyone to flourish wherever they are from in the world, and whatever their racialised identity, gender or socioeconomic background. The consequences of this inadequate education links to modern economies being a root cause of systemic racism and sexism, socioeconomic inequality, and the ecological crisis. When economies are rooted in a set of principles that values whiteness, maleness and wealth, we should not be surprised by the inequalities that show up. Structural inequalities need systemic change, change that infiltrates through every level of the system, otherwise we risk reproducing and deepening them. This book makes the case that in order to reclaim economics it is necessary to diversify, decolonise and democratise how economics is taught and practised, and by whom. It calls on everyone to do what we can to reclaim economics for racial justice, gender equality and future generations.

Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations
  • New interdisciplinary essays
  • Edited by Stephen Copley, Kathryn Sutherland
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    14 January 2026
  • Few works of economic and political analysis have exerted a more profound influence on European, American and latterly world economic and social policy than Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. The version of Adam Smith's economic and social philosophy which has been invoked by proponents such as those in the Adam Smith Institute has often not been the product of a reading of the whole of the Wealth of Nations, but has rested instead on acceptance of the selective reading of parts of the book developed by nineteenth-century market liberals. In the nineteenth century, critiques of the effects of the division of labour were developed outside political economy by a sequence of British cultural critics from Hazlitt and Coleridge to Carlyle and Arnold, who deployed them in their attacks on contemporary industrial capitalism and the 'dismal science' of economics which they saw as providing its intellectual rationalisation; more radically, they formed an important element in the critique of political economy developed by Engels and Marx. Reaffirming the importance of the cultural analysis in the Wealth of Nations as a whole has been an important element in re-examining the historical particularity of Smith's work. Bearing in mind the strength of the cultural critique developed in the later books of the Wealth of Nations, a textually aware reading of the whole work suggests the extent to which its earlier and most famous arguments rest on what might be called strategic imprecisions.

The econocracy
  • The perils of leaving economics to the experts
  • Joe Earle, Cahal Moran, Zach Ward-Perkins
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    06 January 2026
  • One hundred years ago the idea of ‘the economy’ didn’t exist. Now, improving ‘the economy’ has come to be seen as one of the most important tasks facing modern societies. Politics and policymaking are increasingly conducted in the language of economics and economic logic increasingly frames how political problems are defined and addressed. The result is that crucial societal functions are outsourced to economic experts. The econocracy is about how this particular way of thinking about economies and economics has come to dominate many modern societies and its damaging consequences. We have put experts in charge but those experts are not fit for purpose.A growing movement is arguing that we should redefine the relationship between society and economics. Across the world, students, the economists of the future, are rebelling against their education. From three members of this movement comes a book that tries to open up the black box of economic decision making to public scrutiny. We show how a particular form of economics has come to dominate in universities across the UK and has thus shaped our understanding of the economy. We document the weaknesses of this form of economics and how it has failed to address many important issues such as financial stability, environmental sustainability and inequality; and we set out a vision for how we can bring economic discussion and decision making back into the public sphere to ensure the societies of the future can flourish.

James Meade
  • The Utopian Economist
  • Susan Howson
  • Published online:
    27 December 2025
    Print publication:
    19 February 2026
  • James Meade was a highly influential British economist who made significant contributions to both theoretical economics and economic policy. He was awarded a Nobel Prize for his work on the theory of international economic policy and was one of the first economists to serve in the wartime Economic Section of the Cabinet Offices, becoming Director in 1946. Among his many successes in applying theory to policy are the first official national income accounts, 'Keynesian' employment policies and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. This comprehensive biography of Meade's life and career, based on archival sources, covers both his achievements in theoretical economics and his contributions to the development of British and international economic policy during and after the Second World War. It will be of interest to anyone interested in the history of economics in the twentieth century.

Conversations on Rational Choice
  • Catherine Herfeld
  • Published online:
    27 December 2025
    Print publication:
    19 February 2026
  • Rational choice theories belong to the most important building blocks of 20th century economics. Their usefulness to model human behaviour has been extensively debated in modern social science and beyond. While some have argued that rational choice theories should be applied to a broad range of political and social phenomena, the rise of behavioural economics questions whether they are appropriate at all for understanding economic behaviour. Conversations on Rational Choice sheds light on what is actually at stake in these debates. In 23 conversations, some of the most prominent protagonists from economics, psychology, and philosophy discuss their individual perspectives on the nature, possible justifications, and epistemic limitations of rational choice theories. Offering a comprehensive assessment of the value of rational choice theories in producing knowledge in economics, these conversations lay the ground for a more nuanced appraisal of rational choice theories from a practical viewpoint.

Economics and the Family
  • A Social and Political History
  • Miriam Bankovsky
  • Published online:
    08 May 2025
    Print publication:
    05 June 2025
  • Most economists think family economics began in the 1960s when price theory was applied to family behaviour. Instead, this book focuses on enduring concerns with family poverty across the last two centuries. In nineteenth-century Britain and Europe, economists debated the effects of poverty relief and sought to improve family productivity. In the US, interwar household consumer economists studied how to rationalise family consumption, because factories were producing goods for low-income families. From the 1960s onwards, 'New' household economists attributed family poverty to inadequate human capital investment in predominantly non-white families. Even when feminist, development, and queer economists problematised gendered injustices, they recentred family poverty, targeting the 'pauperisation' of motherhood and the marginalisation of 'families we choose.' Economics and the Family does not simply reconstruct this alternate history, it also shows how economists in all these periods overlooked injustices which must be shouldered today.

Relocating Development Economics
  • The First Generation of Modern Indian Economists
  • Maria Bach
  • Published online:
    05 December 2024
    Print publication:
    12 December 2024
  • Originating in the Nineteenth Century, the European idea of development was shaped around the premise that the West possessed progressive characteristics that the East lacked. As a result of this perspective, many alternative development discourses originating in the East were often overlooked and forgotten. Indian Economics is but one example. By recovering thought from the margins, Relocating Development Economics exposes useful new ways of viewing development. It looks at how an Indian tradition in economic thought emerged from a group of Indian economists in the late Nineteenth Century who questioned dominant European economic ideas on development and agricultural economics. This book shows how the first generation of modern Indian economists pushed at the boundaries of existing theories to produce reformulations that better fit their subcontinent and opens up discursive space to find new ways of thinking about regress, progress and development.

Managing Growth in Miniature
  • Solow's Model as an Artifact
  • Verena Halsmayer
  • Published online:
    24 October 2024
    Print publication:
    07 November 2024
  • Managing Growth in Miniature explores the history of the way economists think about growth. It focuses on the period between the 1930s and 1960s, tracing the development of the famed 'Solow growth model,' one of the central mathematical models in postwar economics. It argues that models are not simply 'efficient tools' providing answers to the problems of economic theory and governance. The Solow model's various uses and interpretations related not only to the ways it made things (in)visible, excluded questions, and suggested actions. Its 'success' and effects ultimately also pertained to its fundamental ambiguities. Attending to the concrete sides of economic abstractions, this book provides a richly layered and accessible account of the forms of knowledge that shaped the predominant notion of 'economic growth' and ideas of how to govern it.

Identity, Capabilities, and Changing Economics
  • Reflexive, Adaptive, Socially Embedded Individuals
  • John B. Davis
  • Published online:
    11 January 2024
    Print publication:
    01 February 2024
  • Mainstream economics assumes economic agents act and make decisions to maximize their utility. This model of economic behavior, based on rational choice theory, has come under increasing attack in economics because it does not accurately reflect the way people behave and reason. The shift towards a more realistic account of economic agents has been mostly associated with the rise of behavioral economics, which views individuals through the lens of bounded rationality. Identity, Capabilities, and Changing Economics goes further and uses identity analysis to build on this critique of the utility conception of individuals, arguing it should be replaced by a conception of economic agents in an uncertain world as socially embedded and identified with their capabilities. Written by one of the world's leading philosophers of economics, the book develops a new approach to economics' theory of the individual, explaining individuals as adaptive and reflexive rather than utility maximizing.

Power and Inequality
  • A Reformist Perspective
  • Alessandro Roncaglia
  • Published online:
    04 January 2024
    Print publication:
    18 January 2024
  • Power is a broad and complex concept that cuts across all fields in humanities and social sciences. Written by a leading historian of economic thought, Power and Inequality presents a wide-ranging and multi-disciplinary analysis of power as an economic and social issue. Its aim is not to formulate a new abstract theory of power but rather to illustrate the different ways in which power is used to exacerbate social and economic inequality. Issues such as division of labour and its evolution, different forms of capitalism up to the money-manager economy, the role of networks (from the family to mason lodges and the mafia), the state and the international arena, culture and the role of the masses are considered. The analysis of these elements, causing inequalities of various kinds, is a prerequisite for devising progressive policy strategies aiming at a reduction of inequalities through a strategy of reforms.

Keynes's Economic Consequences of the Peace after 100 Years
  • Polemics and Policy
  • Edited by Patricia Clavin, Giancarlo Corsetti, Maurice Obstfeld, Adam Tooze
  • Published online:
    14 December 2023
    Print publication:
    25 January 2024
  • The Economic Consequences of the Peace is one of the most famous books in the history of economic thought. It is also one of the most polemical. Published as a response to what Keynes saw as the grave errors of the Treaty of Versailles, the book predicted that war reparations and other harsh terms imposed on Germany would lead to its collapse, which in turn would lead to devastating consequences for Europe and the wider world. Predictions that we now know to have been all too accurate. Keynes's Economic Consequences of the Peace after 100 Years brings together an international team of experts to assess the legacy of Keynes's best-selling work. It compiles a series of wide-ranging chapters, exploring the varied influence of his ideas and policy contributions. Written in an accessible style, it recovers the importance of this history and examines the continued relevance of Keynes's controversial book.

Structuralist and Behavioral Macroeconomics
  • Peter Skott
  • Published online:
    10 November 2023
    Print publication:
    21 September 2023
  • Mainstream macroeconomics is founded on the idea of perfectly rational representative agents. Yet there is a growing realization that economic theories based on such agents are inadequate guides to real-world decision making. The behavioural evidence has had significant impacts on microeconomics but the same cannot be said of macroeconomics. This book is part of the movement to do for macroeconomics what behavioural thinking has done for microeconomics. Using behavioural evidence and insights from Keynesian and institutionalist traditions, it presents an empirically grounded alternative to the paradigm that currently dominates macroeconomic theory. It highlights how dynamic interactions across markets can generate instability, endogenous cycles and secular stagnation. It fully engages with macroeconomic theory, provides a multi-faceted view that explains how and why it is time to rethink its foundations and offers a path forward.

Pricing the Priceless
  • A History of Environmental Economics
  • H. Spencer Banzhaf
  • Published online:
    19 October 2023
    Print publication:
    02 November 2023
  • While large literatures have separately examined the history of the environmental movement, government planning, and modern economics, Pricing the Priceless triangulates on all three. Offering the first book-length study of the history of modern environmental economics, it uncovers the unlikely role economists played in developing tools and instruments in support of environmental preservation. While economists were, and still are, seen as scientists who argue in favour of extracting natural resources, H. Spencer Banzhaf shows how some economists by the 1960s turned tools and theories used in defense of development into arguments in defense of the environment. Engaging with widely recognized names, such as John Muir, and major environmental disasters such as the Exxon Valdez oil spill, he offers a detailed examination of the environment, and explains how economics came to enter the field in a new way that made it possible to be “on the side” of the environment.

The Constitution of Political Economy
  • Polity, Society and the Commonweal
  • Adrian Pabst, Roberto Scazzieri
  • Published online:
    03 August 2023
    Print publication:
    17 August 2023
  • The two dominant conceptions of political economy are based on either reducing political decisions to rational-choice reasoning or, conversely, reducing economic structures and phenomena to the realm of politics. In this book, Adrian Pabst and Roberto Scazzieri contend that neither conception is convincing and argue for a fundamental rethinking of political economy. Developing a new approach at the interface of economic theory and political thought, the book shows that political economy covers a plurality of dimensions, which reflect internal hierarchies and multiple relationships within the economic and political sphere. The Constitution of Political Economy presents a new, richer conception of political economy that draws on a range of thinkers from the history of political economy, recognising the complex embedding of the economy and the polity in society. Effective policy-making has to reflect this embedding and rests on the interdependence between local, national, and international actors to address multiple systemic crises.

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