Authorised by Academic Registrar, April 1996
Objectives On completion of this subject students should have a clear understanding of the different analytical frameworks and methodological approaches which economists have used to discuss issues such as value and distribution, unemployment, inflation, fluctuations in output and state intervention; appreciate the importance of particular social and economic contexts for explaining the ways in which different issues and questions have been considered relevant by economists.
Synopsis Topics inlcude issues of growth and distribution in the surplus framework of the classical political economists; economics as physics - the allocation framework of the neoclassical economists; money, gold and inflation in the nineteenth century; the discovery of unemployment; economics as a profession - the claim for a value-free science; early welfare economics; Keynes, unemployment and inflation.
Assessment Written (2 essays): 100%