The Economist as Public Intellectual

The Economist as Public Intellectual examines the power of individual economists to intervene in public affairs and argues that economists’ public interventions have had profound consequences for both the structure and the content of the public sphere. Focusing on the encounters between economists and their publics in the United Kingdom and the United States, the essays in this volume demonstrate how publicity served different purposes in the evolving configurations of academe, business, government, and media during the twentieth century. The economists discussed include Gary Becker, Milton Friedman, John Kenneth Galbraith, and John Maynard Keynes. This volume concludes with a timely examination of economists’ reaction to the current financial downturn.

Subscribers to History of Political Economy will receive a copy of The Economist as Public Intellectual.

Tiago Mata is Senior Research Associate in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. Steven G. Medema is Professor of Economics at the University of Colorado at Denver.