Book Reviews

William J. Baumol of New York University and Princeton University reviews “Economics Evolving: A History of Economic Thought” by Agnar Sandmo. The EconLit Abstract of the reviewed work begins “Revised and expanded English translation of Samfunnsokonomi--en idehistorie (2006). Presents a history of economic thought from the late eighteenth century to the 1970s. Discusses a science and its history; before Adam Smith; Adam Smith; the classical school--Thomas Robert Malthus and David Ricardo; consolidation and innovation--John Stuart Mill; Karl Marx as an economic theorist; the forerunners of marginalism; the marginalist revolution--William Stanley Jevons, Carl Menger, and Leon Walras; Alfred Marshall and partial equilibrium theory; equilibrium and welfare--Francis Ysidro Edgeworth, Vilfredo Pareto, and Arthur C. Pigou; interest and prices--Knut Wicksell and Irving Fisher; new perspectives on markets and competition; the great systems debate; John Maynard Keynes and the Keynesian revolution; Ragnar Frisch, Trygve Haavelmo, and the birth of econometrics; the modernization of economic theory in the postwar period; further developments in the postwar period; and long-term trends and new perspectives. Sandmo is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration. Index.”