IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/palchp/978-1-349-09683-1_4.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

History of Economic Thought

In: Lionel Robbins

Author

Listed:
  • D. P. O’Brien

    (University of Durham)

Abstract

Robbins attached great importance to the history of economic thought as part of the education of those studying economics — a subject which was too narrow on its own. Study of past theory should help us to understand the problems of the past andto appreciate more fully both the strengths and limitations of modern theory. History of economic thought broadened the range of intellectual possibilities under consideration, and it helped to provide a cultural background for courses.1 He argued for compulsory courses in the history of economic thought2 and did much to promote the subject at LSE3 — his Theory of Economic Policyoriginated in his LSE lectures.4 He struggled against the insularity of English economics5 and against the curious narrowing of vision which results from knowing only very recent literature.6 Undoubtedly he felt at some stages that he was fighting a losing battle;7 but he was ultimately successful to a remarkable degree. There seems little doubt that the revival of interest in the subject in Britain in the post-war years owed an enormous debt to his direct influence.8

Suggested Citation

  • D. P. O’Brien, 1988. "History of Economic Thought," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Lionel Robbins, chapter 4, pages 41-50, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-349-09683-1_4
    DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-09683-1_4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-349-09683-1_4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.