Economists

Question 1

• Though he wrote on nearly every subject of moral and social philosophy,
• he is basically remembered as the author of An Inquiry into the nature and causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) and as the creator of the metaphor of the “invisible hand.”
• This work more-or-less single-handedly founded the **Classical school **of economics.

Answer 1

Adam Smith (Scottish, 1723–1790)

Question 2

• Conservative thinker famous for his advocacy of monetarism (a revision of the quantity theory of money)
• in works like A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960 (1963)
• strongly associated with the ideals of laissez-faire government policy.

Answer 2

Milton Friedman (American, 1912–2006)

Question 3

• Also a historian and social philosopher
• extended the labor theory of value to its logical conclusion, his theory of surplus value
• this theory, along with his defense of economic materialism, appeared in Das Kapital (1867, 1885, 1894).

Answer 3

Karl Marx (German, 1818–1883)

Question 4

• most famous for The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936)
• which judged most of classical economic analysis to be a special case (hence “General Theory”)
• and argued that the best way to deal with prolonged recessions was deficit spending.

Answer 4

John Maynard Keynes (English, 1883–1946)

Question 5

• best known for Principles of Political Economy and Taxation,
• which introduced more-or-less modern notions of comparative advantage and its theoretical justification for unfettered international trade
• put forth the so-called iron law of wages.

Answer 5

David Ricardo (English, 1772–1823)