The Teaching of Business Cycles in 1905–6: Insight into the Development of Macroeconomic Theory

Warren Samuels

Chapter 10 in Essays in the History of Mainstream Political Economy, 1992, pp 203-222 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Traditional business cycle theories and the business cycles course were important facets of the development of what is now seen as macroeconomics, and knowledge of their development affords insight into the development of macroeconomic theory. Fortunately there is now available a set of excellent lecture notes and student reports from a course, ‘Commercial Crises and Cycles of Trade’, given at Harvard two-thirds of a century ago. The notes cast light on the early identity and character of the study of what is now within the domain of macroeconomic (and monetary) theory, as well as the quality of teaching in that field, during a period when macroeconomic questions hitherto have appeared to have been largely dormant. They reflect a surprisingly ‘modern’ business cycles course in both coverage and execution, as well as basic conceptualization, and also evidence the considerable intellectual ferment — largely forgotten and thus neglected by both macro theorists and historians of economic thought — that accompanied the acknowledged doctrine of Say’s law.

Keywords: Business Cycle; Banking System; Business Condition; Class Note; Credit System (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1992
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-349-12266-0_11

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9781349122660

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-12266-0_11

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().