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Paul Samuelson's Legacy

Dec. 21, 2009 7:02 AM ET6 Comments
David Warsh profile picture
David Warsh
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Paul Samuelson died a week ago Sunday, at 94. For some historical perspective on the role he played, consider that, for the entire history of modern economics, all 250 years of it, from its beginnings during the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century to the present day, the discipline has been dominated by five canonical textbooks – and only five (though, of course, each had many imitators). Those who found compelling the authority of these texts became economists. Those who didn’t became something else – sociologists, political theorists, anthropologists, psychologists, historians, lawyers, reformers, businessmen, religious leaders.

The first of these texts, in 1776, was An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith. Smith explained the mechanisms underlying Great Britain’s long consumer boom – the world’s first — with a clarity that still rings true today. His book wasn’t the first word about these topics; instead it was, in some sense, the last. Before Wealth of Nations, there were philosophers and pamphleteers. Afterwards, there was a community of scholars around the world working collaboratively on a set of problems that they called political economy.

Forty years passed before David Ricardo’s The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation appeared in 1817 — “to correct the errors in Smith,” the author explained. The world had changed. England had suffered through nearly twenty years of population explosion and desperate war with France. Ricardo (and his friend Thomas Robert Malthus, coming at it from a slightly different angle) envisaged a world soon running out of natural resources, of arable land, of food itself. Their ideas were taken up with great excitement in London. Within the newly-formed Political Economy Club they won disciples; outside of it, they sparked criticism and ridicule.

The third great text, Principles of Political Economy, by

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David Warsh profile picture
129 Followers
David Warsh is proprietor of EconomicPrincipals.com (http://www.EconomicPrincipals.com), an independent, reader-supported, Web-based weekly that he started in 2002. Before that, he covered economics for The Boston Globe for 20 years and, earlier, reported on business for Forbes Magazine and The Wall Street Journal; from Vietnam for Pacific Stars and Stripes and Newsweek Magazine; and for the City New Bureau of Chicago. A two-time winner of a Gerald Loeb Award, he is the author of three books: The Idea of Economic Complexity (Viking, 1984); Economic Principals: Masters and Mavericks of Modern Economics (The Free Press, 1993); and, most recently, Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations: a Story of Economic Discovery (Norton, 2006).

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