Markets, Power, and Wealth

About the Book

Individualism is a central tenet of economic theory and of ideological conservativism. This book examines the historical sources of this philosophy since its enunciation by Adam Smith in 1776. The examination shows that individualism can provide solutions only to a limited number of determinate problems and fails as a policy matrix for governmental action because it ignores the institutional framework that supports all economic activity. Joining Macrotheory to Institutionalism, a new combined analysis of how social institutions influence policy, would stress the detemining role of government and political power in economic affairs, and the close affinity of power to wealth.

About the Author

Richard Hyse is Emeritus Professor of History of Economic Thought and European Economic History at New York State University Oswego. He authored the first English translation, with annotations, of Sismondi’s Nouveaux Principes d’Economie Politique, and a paper on the then unknown Dutch financial transactions of the economist and banker Richard Cantillon after his flight from Paris to Amsterdam during the Mississippi Bubble Period. The interaction of economic development with political institutions and the relation of power to wealth, as demonstrated by the progress of the European Union and the development of business cycles, has been the author’s major career interest