Pat Hudson

Keith Tribe

This volume builds upon the renewed interest in the long-run global development of wealth and inequality stimulated by Thomas Piketty. It brings together an international team of leading economic historians and economists to provide a comprehensive overview of the theory, practice, and policy of inequality and its place in the modern world order.

The Piketty Opportunity

The Contradictions of Capital in the Twenty-first Century

Athar Hussain

Marxism and the Agrarian Question

Keith Tribe elaborates an explicitly philological approach to the history of economic thought. Beginning with an account of the transformation in the concept of 'economy' from antiquity to modernity, he presents readings of the writings of Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and Léon Walras which seek to demonstrate what can be achieved by an attention to the construction of text, concept, and number.

Language, History, and Economics

The Economy of the Word

This book provides an overview of 200 years of German economic thought from the eighteenth century to the Social Market.

German Economic Discourse, 1750-1950

Strategies of Economic Order

It was only in the sixteenth century that texts began to refer to the significance of "economic activity" -- of sustaining life. This was not because the ordinary business of life was thought unimportant, but because the principles governing economic conduct were thought to be obvious or uncontroversial. The subsequent development of economic writing thus parallels the development of capitalism in Western Europe. From the seventeenth to the twenty-first century there has been a constant shift in content, audience, and form of argument as the literature of economic argument developed. The Economy of the Word proposes that to understand the various forms that economic literature has taken, we need to adopt a more literary approach in economics specifically, to adopt the instruments and techniques of philology. This way we can conceive the history of economic thought to be an on-going work in progress, rather than the story of the emergence of modern economic thinking. This approach demands that we pay attention to the construction of particular texts, showing the work of economic argument in different contexts. In sum, we need to pay attention to the "economy of the word". The Economy of the Word is divided into three parts. The first explains what the term "economy" has meant from Antiquity to Modernity, coupling this conceptual history with an examination of how the idea of national income was turned into a number during the first half of the twentieth century. The second part is devoted to Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, considering first the manner in which Smith deals with international trade, and then the way in which the book was read in the course of the nineteenth century. Part III examines the sources used by Karl Marx and Léon Walras in developing their economic analysis, drawing attention to their shared intellectual context in French political economy.

Ere Nokkala

Adriana Luna-Fabritius

Marten Seppel

FORTHCOMING OPEN ACCESS TITLE This collection of essays re-examines ideas of change and movements for change in early modern Europe without presuming that "progressive" change was the outcome of "reforms". "Reform" today implies rational, incremental change to public institutions and procedures. "Improvement" has a more general application, emphasising the positive outcome to which "reform" is oriented. But the language of reform is today used of historical personalities and movements that did not themselves use the term, and who in many cases were not necessarily seeking the progressive change that we would understand today. The activities of "reform" were embedded in contemporary politics, and while "improvement" was part of a contemporary vocabulary, its real presence has been obscured by the range of natural languages in which it was expressed. Contributors to this volume seek to establish what was meant by contemporary usage. Bringing together scholars of Russia, Southern, Western, Central and Northern Europe, this collection sheds new light on both common and divergent features of a political process too often treated as a uniform movement towards modernity. This volume is a useful resource for students and scholars interested in Enlightenment studies, intellectual history, and conceptual history in early modern Europe.

Reform and Improvement in Early Modern Europe

Political Reason and the Language of Change

Emeritus Professor of History Pat Hudson

Visiting Fellow Department of History University of Bristol Keith Tribe

This volume of essays builds upon renewed interest in the long-run global development of wealth and inequality stimulated by the publication in 2014 of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century. It brings together an international team of leading economic historians and economists to provide a comprehensive overview of global developments in the theory, practice, and policy of inequality, and its place in the modern world order. The contributors take stock of the key concepts involved - capital, wealth and income, inequality, economic development, financialization - and evaluate the evidence for historical trends in existing national statistical data sources. To the developed economies upon which Piketty drew are added contributions covering Latin America, Africa, India, and Japan, providing a global perspective upon a global phenomenon. The book seeks to provide readers with a deeper awareness and understanding of the significance of equality and inequality in economic development, the varying pace of economic change around the world, and the manner in which this process of change affects the distribution of wealth and inequality in diverse economies. The collection marks an important step in the process of developing Piketty's analytical framework and empirical material, overcoming its limitations and helping to cement a lasting place for inequality in the agenda of growth theory.

Keith Tribe

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