Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 German Economics as Development Economics: From the Thirty Years' War to World War II
- Chapter 2 The Role of the State in Economic Growth
- Chapter 3 A Brief Introduction to Veit Ludwig von Seckendorff (1626– 1692)
- Chapter 4 Exploring the Genesis of Economic Innovations: The Religious Gestalt-Switch and the Duty to Invent as Preconditions for Economic Growth (with Arno Daastøl)
- Chapter 5 Johann Heinrich Gottlob von Justi (1717– 1771): The Life and Times of an Economist Adventurer
- Chapter 6 Jacob Bielfeld's “On the Decline of States” (1760) and Its Relevance for Today
- Chapter 7 Raw Materials in the History of Economic Policy; or, Why List (the Protectionist) and Cobden (the Free Trader) Both Agreed on Free Trade in Corn
- Chapter 8 Compensation Mechanisms and Targeted Economic Growth: Lessons from the History of Economic Policy
- Chapter 9 Karl Bücher and the Geographical Dimensions of Techno-Economic Change: Production-Based Economic Theory and the Stages of Economic Development
- Chapter 10 Austrian Economics and the Other Canon: The Austrians between the Activistic-Idealistic and the Passivistic-Materialistic Traditions of Economics
- Chapter 11 Nietzsche and the German Historical School of Economics (with Sophus A. Reinert)
- Chapter 12 Creative Destruction in Economics: Nietzsche, Sombart, Schumpeter (with Hugo Reinert)
- Chapter 13 Schumpeter in the Context of Two Canons of Economic Thought
- Chapter 14 The Role of Technology in the Creation of Rich and Poor Nations: Underdevelopment in a Schumpeterian System
- Chapter 15 Towards an Austro–German Theory of Uneven Economic Development? A Plea for Theorising by Inclusion
- Chapter 16 The Qualitative Shift in European Integration: Towards Permanent Wage Pressures and a ‘Latin-Americanization’ of Europe? (with Rainer Kattel)
- Chapter 17 Primitivization of the EU Periphery: The Loss of Relevant Knowledge
- Chapter 18 Mechanisms of Financial Crises in Growth and Collapse: Hammurabi, Schumpeter, Perez, and Minsky
- Chapter 19 Full Circle: Economics from Scholasticism through Innovation and Back into Mathematical Scholasticism: Reflections on a 1769 Price Essay: “Why Is It That Economics So Far Has Gained So Few Advantages from Physics and Mathematics?”
- Chapter 20 Werner Sombart (1863– 1941) and the Swan Song of German Economics
- Index
Chapter 8 - Compensation Mechanisms and Targeted Economic Growth: Lessons from the History of Economic Policy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 March 2019
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 German Economics as Development Economics: From the Thirty Years' War to World War II
- Chapter 2 The Role of the State in Economic Growth
- Chapter 3 A Brief Introduction to Veit Ludwig von Seckendorff (1626– 1692)
- Chapter 4 Exploring the Genesis of Economic Innovations: The Religious Gestalt-Switch and the Duty to Invent as Preconditions for Economic Growth (with Arno Daastøl)
- Chapter 5 Johann Heinrich Gottlob von Justi (1717– 1771): The Life and Times of an Economist Adventurer
- Chapter 6 Jacob Bielfeld's “On the Decline of States” (1760) and Its Relevance for Today
- Chapter 7 Raw Materials in the History of Economic Policy; or, Why List (the Protectionist) and Cobden (the Free Trader) Both Agreed on Free Trade in Corn
- Chapter 8 Compensation Mechanisms and Targeted Economic Growth: Lessons from the History of Economic Policy
- Chapter 9 Karl Bücher and the Geographical Dimensions of Techno-Economic Change: Production-Based Economic Theory and the Stages of Economic Development
- Chapter 10 Austrian Economics and the Other Canon: The Austrians between the Activistic-Idealistic and the Passivistic-Materialistic Traditions of Economics
- Chapter 11 Nietzsche and the German Historical School of Economics (with Sophus A. Reinert)
- Chapter 12 Creative Destruction in Economics: Nietzsche, Sombart, Schumpeter (with Hugo Reinert)
- Chapter 13 Schumpeter in the Context of Two Canons of Economic Thought
- Chapter 14 The Role of Technology in the Creation of Rich and Poor Nations: Underdevelopment in a Schumpeterian System
- Chapter 15 Towards an Austro–German Theory of Uneven Economic Development? A Plea for Theorising by Inclusion
- Chapter 16 The Qualitative Shift in European Integration: Towards Permanent Wage Pressures and a ‘Latin-Americanization’ of Europe? (with Rainer Kattel)
- Chapter 17 Primitivization of the EU Periphery: The Loss of Relevant Knowledge
- Chapter 18 Mechanisms of Financial Crises in Growth and Collapse: Hammurabi, Schumpeter, Perez, and Minsky
- Chapter 19 Full Circle: Economics from Scholasticism through Innovation and Back into Mathematical Scholasticism: Reflections on a 1769 Price Essay: “Why Is It That Economics So Far Has Gained So Few Advantages from Physics and Mathematics?”
- Chapter 20 Werner Sombart (1863– 1941) and the Swan Song of German Economics
- Index
Summary
Introduction
The history of economic policy is curiously absent as an economic discipline. Economic history, history of economic thought and Schumpeter's History of Economic Analysis all touch on policy issues, but longitudinal analyses focusing on policy are scarce. We would claim that this is somewhat of a blind spot in academic economics. The size of this blind spot increases because most history of economic thought today is limited to presenting a genealogy of today's standard theory. The economic theories that formed the basis for successful economic policy in the past are, at best, treated peripherally. The works of Charles Babbage on the roles of machinery and manufactures (Babbage, 1835) and of science (Babbage, 1830) in economic life, influenced English thinking on economic policy at the time more than did the work of his contemporary David Ricardo. At the time, a member of the US House of Representatives actually made the comment that, like so many other English products, the theories of David Ricardo seemed to be intended for export only. Yet, today's textbooks in the history of economic thought are filled with Ricardo, but do not refer to Babbage. No doubt the absence of a long term policy perspective is further aggravated because ours is a time when – as Jacob Viner put it – ‘economists have succeeded in being as ahistorical as an educated man can perhaps possibly be’. (Viner, 1991 (1957): 192)
For most of modern history, economic policy has been based on theories with assumptions fundamentally differing from today's standard theory. One important difference is that for most of the last 500 years national economic policies have been based on theories where economic activities have been seen as qualitatively different. In other words, economic growth and welfare were seen as activity-specific – as being present in some economic activities rather than in others. Consequently, economic policy was for centuries successfully targeted to activities with certain characteristics. Building the European market economies – with the necessary institutional and financial scaffolding – took centuries of conscious construction, and the activity-specific nature of economic growth was a crucial aspect of the policies that first built Europe, and then the United States.
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- The Visionary Realism of German EconomicsFrom the Thirty Years’ War to the Cold War, pp. 267 - 288Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2019