The Wealth of Ideas
The Wealth of Ideas
traces the history of economic thought, from itsprehistory (the Bible, Classical antiquity) to the present day. In thiseloquently written, scientifically rigorous and well-documented book,chapters on William Petty, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx,William Stanley Jevons, Carl Menger, L´eon Walras, Alfred Marshall, John Maynard Keynes, Joseph Schumpeter and Piero Sraffa alternatewith chapters on other important figures and on debates of the period.Economic thought is seen as developing between two opposite poles: asubjective one, based on the ideas of scarcity and utility, and an objec-tive one based on the notions of physical costs and surplus. ProfessorRoncagliafocusesonthedifferentviewsoftheeconomyandsocietyandon their evolution over time and critically evaluates the foundations of thescarcity–utilityapproachincomparisonwiththeClassical/Keynesianapproach.
is Professor of Economics in the Depart-ment of Economic Sciences, University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’. He is amemberoftheAccademiaNazionaledeiLinceiandeditorof
BNLQuar-terly Review
and
Moneta e Credito
. His numerous publications include
Piero Sraffa: His Life, Thought and Cultural Heritage
(2000) and theItalian edition of this book,
La ricchezza delle idee
(2001) which receivedthe 2003 J´erome Adolphe Blanqui Award from the European Societyfor the History of Economic Thought.
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