[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on History of economic theory and method
This book is in detail coverage of economic ideas from ancient times to the present. It consists of twenty three chapters. In this report I’ll try to summarize basic concepts of this book.
The first chapter is economics and its history in which Ekelund and Hebert present a thorough examination of said history from the time of Plato to today. This chapter contains different major periods of economics. Such as contributions of the ancient Greeks, Xenophon, Plato, Protagoras, Aristotle and exchange, Aristotle on money and interest, roman and early Christian contributions.
In their investigation of the medieval period of the tradition, catholic theologians have long privileged the texts and thinkers of the scholastic age. There are many possible reasons for this privilege. The monumental accomplishment of the great scholastics such as Bonaventure and Aquinas has understandably drawn eyes to their work and tends to dwarf other contributions. (23-26)
Leo xiii's virtual anointing of Aquinas as the normative catholic theologian reinforced the implicit consensus that thomistic theology is the medieval tradition. since catholic theology after the reformation retained, and indeed emphasized, its concern for the integration of theology and philosophy, it is logical that contemporary theologians would look to the philosophical sources of the middle ages and these, undeniably, are richest during the scholastic period. but the theologian concerned to understand and build upon the fullness of the catholic tradition must wonder whether the privileged position of scholastic writers might indeed have blinded us to the theological importance of other texts.
Then Ekelund and Hebert discussed about mercantilism that is strictly a British approach to economic wealth and differed radically and indeed contrasted with its French counterpart of physiocracy. Mercantilism is not so much a theory as a bundle of ideas centered on the conviction that governments must regulate trade in order for it to further the national interest......
