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Mercantilist School
Mercantilism was an economic theory and practice, dominant in Europe from the 16th to the 18th century, that promoted governmental regulation of a nation's economy for the purpose of augmenting state power at the expense of rival national powers. It is the economic counterpart of political absolutism. -
Phisiocratic School
Physiocracy is an economic theory developed by a group of 18th century Enlightenment French economists who believed that the wealth of nations was derived solely from the value of "land agriculture" or "land development" and that agricultural products should be highly priced. -
Adam Smith
Author of The Wealth of Nations. Came up with the foundations of classical free market economic theory. Including the Invisible Hand, self-interest, and laissez-faire. -
Thomas Malthus
Interested in populations. Concluded that humans do not overpopulate to the point of starvation because people change behavior when faced with economic incentives. Dismal Science: starvation would result when population growth the rate of increase in food supply -
Jean-Baptiste Say
Stated that supply creates it's own demand. Said that in the short run there could be no surplus of goods relative to demand. One of the first people to see that the value of a good comes from its utilty to the consumer, not from the labor used in producing it. -
David Ricardo
Monetarist. Formulated the idea of comparative costs- Comparative Advantage. Opposed protectionism, at his time the Corn Laws, which restricted imports of wheat. He advocated for free trade. -
Classical School
Marked by the writing of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. Believed that the wealth of nations was based not on gold but on trade. Saw that markets typically regulate themselves when left alone. Believed that markets work the best without government intervention. -
Frederic Bastiat
Economic journalist known for his usage of humor to explain economic concepts. Broken Window Fallacy/Parable shows how opportunity costs and the law of unintended consequences affect economic activity in unseen ways. -
Karl Marx
Labor Theory of Value argued that the economic value of a good/service depended on the amount of socially necessary labor needed to produce it. Decreasing rates of profit, increasing concentration of wealth. Believed capitalism "contained seeds of its own destruction", and that communism was inevitable. -
Alfred Marshal
First supply and demand model/graph. Came up with the concept of consumer surplus. Came up with a basic approach to welfare economics. Argued that the economy is an evolutionary process in which technology, market institutions and the preferences of people change with people's behavior. -
Joseph Schumpeter
One of the first people to come up with a concept of entrepreneurship. Believed that the innovations of an entrepreneur required as much skill and risk as the process of invention. Said that innovations created creative destruction. Believed creative destruction caused continuous progress and better living standards for everyone. -
John Maynard Keynes
Favored government intervention in the economy. His "General Theory" showed that full employment could be maintained only with the help of government spending. Thought that government should take the place of businesses by investing in public works and hiring the unemployed. -
Frederick Hayek
Anti Socialist. Believed that the market was not designed by anyone but slowly evolved because of people's actions. Thought that Keynesian solutions for unemployment would increase inflation. -
Neoclasical School
Neoclassical economics is a set of approaches to economics focusing on the determination of prices, outputs, and income distributions in markets through supply and demand. -
Milton Friedman
Disproved the Phillips Curve predicted stagflation, Monetarist. Theorized that there was a natural rate of unemployment, and said that governments could increase employment above the rate only by increasing aggregate demand. -
Keynesian School Of Thought
Keynesian Economics is an economic theory of total spending in the economy and its effects on output and inflation. Keynesian economics was developed by the British economist John Maynard Keynes during the 1930s in an attempt to understand the Great Depression. -
Monateristic School
Monetarism is a school of thought that emphasises the role of governments in controlling the amount of money in circulation.
