The Trend of Economic Thinking : Essays on Political Economists and Economic History (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek)

Rating:
Summary: An excellent overview of economic intellectual history
Review: In The Trend of Economic Thinking (Vol. 3 of the Collected Works of F.A. Hayek), the editors have collected together some of Hayek's essays and book reviews on many of the major English and Western European political economists from the early Eighteenth through the mid-Nineteenth Centuries. These essays trace much of the evolution of classical economic thought, showing that many of the ideas commonly associated with Smith and others of the classical period actually much predated them, but also highlighting the original contributions of each of the great thinkers discussed in the essays.

The book is divided into four parts. The first, "The Economist and His Dismal Task," presents some of Hayek's views on the the nature of the study of economics and in the social sciences generally. The second, "The Origins of Political Economy in Britain," presents essays on Francis Bacon, Dr. Bernard Mandeville, David Hume (who Hayek greatly admired), and Adam Smith. The third section, "English Monetary Policy and the Bullion Debate," consists of four previously unpublished chapters of a book Hayek started to write but never completed, plus essays on Richard Cantillon and Henry Thornton. The last section of the book, "Currents of Thought in the Ninteenth Century," comprises three short essays on Frederic Bastiat, Jules Dupuit, and Hermann Gossen, respectively.

This book does not cover the Austrian School (that comes in Volume 4 of the Collected Works), but it is a must read for any student who wants to study the great classical writers in political economy or F.A. Hayek's views of them.