HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT

Knowledge and understanding: The course aims to provide students with knowledge and useful elements for understanding and interpreting the theories that have characterized economic science over the centuries.

Applying knowledge and understanding: The knowledge of economic doctrines will allow the student to strengthen their abstraction skills, acquire a greater awareness of the methodologies used by economic science, use current theories in a critical way. Upon completion of the course the student will be put in a position to interpret current socio-economic facts in the light of past theories.

Making judgements: The assimilation of the economic theories covered by the course, implemented also through seminars and classroom discussions, will lead the student to acquire the necessary maturity to express opinions, with full autonomy of judgment, on the economic theories and facts of the present.

Communication skills: The study of the History of Economic Thought will allow the student to acquire the necessary preparation to easily support a comparison on the fundamental themes of economic science. In order to better achieve this goal, communication and debate in the classroom will be encouraged during the course.

Learning skills: Through slides, classroom readings, seminars and discussions on particularly relevant topics, the History of Economic Thought course aims to provide useful tools to develop and expand the student's learning skills allowing, once the course is completed, to continue independently in the study of economic doctrines.

Frontal lessons

The ancient pre-classical economic thought. Mercantilism, the physiocracy and other precursors of classical economic thought. Adam Smith. Ricardo and Malthus. John Stuart Mill and the decline of classical political economy. Karl Marx. Jevons, Menger and the Austrian founders of marginalist analysis. The spread of marginalist analysis and the transition to the neoclassical economy. Walras and the theory of general economic equilibrium. Alfred Marshall and neoclassical economy. Schumpeter: a Renaissance man in the 20th century. Keynesian macroeconomics

H. LANDRETH – D. C. COLANDER, Storia del pensiero economico, il Mulino, Bologna 1996