New MRUniversity class on Great Economists

We cover the history of economic thought, starting with Galileo and right up to (but not including) the Marginal Revolution.  The main course page is here.  We also now have extended “all-in-one” iTunes podcasts, which you can download from the main course page.  The course will go up in eleven installments.

Among other topics, we cover mercantilism, the Ricardian model, J.S. Mill, and provide video annotations of every single chapter from Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations.  Malthus, Torrens, Dupuit, Cournot, Friedrich List and many other luminaries are well-represented.  Marx will someday get a class of his own but he is not in this one, apologies to anyone concerned.

There is also an entire course section on the economic history issues behind classical economics, including the Bullionist debates (eerily reminiscent of current times, I might add), the living standards debate, the Poor Laws debate, debates over the Irish famine, the history of protectionism, and the history of British government debt in the 18th and 19th centuries, among other topics.  You will once again see just how much we are reliving and reenacting critical debates from the past.

Recording comprehensive coverage of Wealth of Nations I found an exhilarating and remarkably instructive experience; Smith is even more underrated than I had thought.

In an era when the history of economic thought is very often no longer taught at the undergraduate or graduate levels, we hope this course will help keep the history of thought tradition alive for many years to come.

By the way, if you are a historian of thought and would like to add some videos to our course, please contact us.