Year: 2005
Type: article
Abstract: The analysis of the appropriate role for government within the economic system has been a centerpiece of economic thinking from its inception.No area of economic analysis has been untouched by this issue: public finance, money, labor, development and growth, industrial organization, international economics . . .all have wrapped up within them, throughout the history of economic thought, issues regarding the role that government plays or ought to play, the analysis of the impacts of policy or potential policies, and other, related, concerns.It is also, of course, the most controversial area of economic analysis.Yes, economists debate things like models of price determination, the appropriate role for dynamics in economic modeling, the potential limitations of certain forms of econometric analysis.But nothing charges the debates like issues that reach into the policy arena.Positive theories and descriptions, and normative prescriptions alike, all take on a strong normative cast-as We would like to thank Duke University Press and the Mercatus Center at George Mason University for their generous financial support of the conference, the papers from which are published in the present volume.Craufurd Goodwin, HOPE's editor, and Paul Dudenhefer, HOPE's managing editor, were incredibly helpful to us in putting together the conference, particularly when the original conference hotel informed us just weeks before the conference that they had accidentally overbooked the hotel and could not host us for the weekend.We would also like to thank the scholars whose work is published here for contributing to what was both an excellent and spirited conference and what we believe is a volume that makes an important contribution to the literature in the history of economic thought.We are particularly grateful to Warren Samuels for his willingness to serve as a general discussant and to present the assessment that concludes this volume.
Source: History of Political Economy
Author: Steven G. Medema
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2013320535