MACROCAT
HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT
ECON
3700
FALL SEMESTER
2007
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Lectures:
Classroom:
Instructor:
Office:
Office hours:
Phone:
E-mail:
Web Site:
Required Texts:
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10:00 – 10:50 a.m.,
Monday, Wednesday, Friday
CoB
(Lowder and Lowder Bldg.), Room
034
Roger W. Garrison 
CoB (Lowder and
Lowder Bldg.),
Room 211
1:00–2:30
p.m., Monday through
Thursday (and by appointment)
(334)
844-2920
garriro@auburn.edu
http//:www.auburn.edu/~garriro
Mark Skousen, The Making of Modern Economics:
The Lives and Ideas of the Great Thinkers, New York: M. E. Sharpe,
2001.
Robert Heilbroner and William Milberg, The Making Economic
Society,
12th edition, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2008.
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Scope and Purpose of the Course:
The lectures and texts trace Economic ideas from the pre-classical
conceptions to the theorizing of contemporary economists. Over the
years, economists have learned---some of them, anyway---that the
history of
their discipline can serve as a critical anchor in assessing
contemporary developments. Seemingly new theoretical developments may
turn out to be old but long forgotten. Seemingly innovative policy
prescriptions may turn out to have a long and ignoble history. Leland
B. Yeager identifies the special significance of the History of
Economic Thought:
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"Cultivation of the history of thought is more
necessary in economics
than in the natural sciences because earlier discoveries in economics
are in danger of
being forgotten; maintaining a cumulative
growth of knowledge is more
difficult. In the natural sciernces, discoveries get embodied not
only into further advances in pure knowledge but also into technology,
many of whose users have a profit and loss incentive to get things
straight. The practitioners of economic technology are largely
politicians and political appointees with rather different incentives.
In economics, consequently, we need scholars who specialize in keeping
us aware and able to recognize earlier contributions--and earlier
mistakes--when they surface as supposedly new ideas. By exerting a
needed discipline, specialists in the history of thought can contribute
to the cumulative character of economics."
---Leland
B. Yeager, 1973
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Organization,
Readings, and Exam
Schedule:
The reading material is divided into three segments as shown the
table below. The table includes chapter assignments from Mark Skousen's
Making of Modern Economics and from Robert Heilbroner and
William Milberg's Making of Economic
Society as well as some Special Readings, which are listed (with
links) in a table below, and biographical sketches provided (mostly) by
the History of Economic Thought website. These
assignments
may be modified as the course progresses. Also, additional readings,
to be made available
through the course web site, may be assigned.
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General Topic
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Reading from
Skousen's book
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Reading from
Heilbroner's book
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Special Readings
(by R. W. Garrison) |
Exam Dates
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Pre-Classical
and Classical Thought (through 1871)
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Chapters 1 through 6
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Chapters 1 through
5
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Reading 1 and 3 |
September
21 |
Neoclassical
Thought (including the Austrians)
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Chapters
7 though 12
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Chapters 6 through 10
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Readings 4 through 8
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October 26
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Keynesian
Economics and the Moderns (from 1936)
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Chapters 13 through
17 |
Chapters
11 through 15
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Readings 9 and 10 |
TBA
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Special
Readings:
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1.
R. W. Garrison, "The
Intertemporal Adam Smith," Quarterly Journal of Austrian
Economics, vol. 1, no. 1 (Spring), 1998, pp. 51-60.
2.
R. W. Garrison, "Gustav Cassel," in Thomas
Cate, ed., Encyclopedia of Keynesian Economics, Aldershot,
England: Edward Elgar, 1997, pp. 90-93.
<>3. Vivian Walsh and
Harvey Gram, Classical and Neoclassical Theories of
General Equilibrium: Historical Origins and Mathematical Structure, Market Process, vol. 1, no. 1 (January), 1983, pp.
3-5.
4.
R. W. Garrison, "Austrian Economics," forthcoming in William
A. Darity, ed., The International
Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences," 2nd ed., London:
Macmillan and Company, 2008.
5.
R. W. Garrison, "Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk," in Randall Holcombe,
ed., Fifteen Great Austrian Economists, Auburn, AL: Ludwig von
Mises Institute, 1998, pp. 113-122.
6.
R. W. Garrison, "Ludwig Edler von Mises," in
David Glasner, ed., Business Cycles and Depressions: An Encyclopedia.
New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1997, pp. 440-42.
7.
R. W. Garrison, "Murray Rothbard," in Murray
N. Rothbard: In Memorium. Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute,
1995, pp. 13-18.
8.
R. W. Garrison and I. M. Kirzner, "Friedrich August von Hayek" in John Eatwell,
Murray Milgate, and Peter Newman, eds., The New Palgrave: A
Dictionary of Economics, London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 1987, pp.
609-614.
9.
R. W. Garrison, Review of Allan
H. Meltzer, Keynes's Monetary Theory: A Different
Interpretation. Critical Review, vol. 6, no. 4, 1993, pp. 471-492.
10. R. W. Garrison,
Review of Fred R. Glahe, ed., Keynes's The General Theory of
Employment, Interest, and Money: A Concordance, The Austrian Economics Newsletter, vol. 12, no. 1 (Spring), 1992, pp.
10-12.
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Class
Attendance:
Students are required to attend all class meetings and to arrive before
the lecture begins. Each student begins
the course with 100 attendance points.
Then, beginning on Monday, August 20, he or she loses two points for
each
unexcused absence. (Late-arriving students can be counted as absent at
the discretion of the professor.) Attendance counts for twenty
percent of the course grade. (NOTE: Students
will be
required to sign an attendance roster each day. A harsh penalty will be
imposed on any student who signs the attendance roster for another
student:
The signer and possibly the signee will forfeit all attendance
points.)
Class
Participation: Student
participation is
encouraged
and welcomed. Questions for the purpose of clarification will benefit
most
all the students; critical questions and comments tend to make the
course
more interesting.
Writing
Assignment:
Each student must complete a writing assignment of three-to-five pages
(double-spaced, 12-pt. font, with one-inch margins). The objective is
to deal with a current economic issue by drawing on the ideas discussed
in this course. This short paper, worth ten percent of the course
grade, must be submitted before the Thanksgiving break. (Further
guidance will be offered once the course is underway.)
Examinations:
There will
be two one-hour exams, each worth twenty percent of of the course
grade, and a (comprehensive) final exam worth thirty percent of the
course grade. The specific format of exams is yet to be determined. The
wearing of caps,
hats, bonnets, motorcycle helmets, ski masks or other headgear is not
allowed during the exam.
Make-up
Exams: Students will
not be permitted
to take the exams early or late. Should it become necessary for a
student
to miss an exam, he or she should notify the instructor in advance
of the exam date. Students with excused absences will be required to
take
a make-up exam as arranged by the professor.
Grading System: Course
grades will
be based on ATTENDANCE (20%), the WRITING ASSIGNMENT (10%), TWO
ONE-HOUR EXAMS (20% each), and the FINAL EXAM (30%) Letter
grades for the course will be determined by applying a 10-point scale
to
the weighted exam scores. That is, 90 and above is an A; 80 to 90 is a
B; 70 to 80 is a C, 60 to 70 is a D, and 0 to 60 is an F.
Biographical sketches of
Significant
Economists (gleaned mostly from the History of Economic
Thought (HET) website):
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