Among the early neo-classical economists, Francis Edgeworth is known as one of the most brilliant. Mirowski has created an intellectual biography of this key figure that is unprecedented in scope.

"This work documents the history of techniques that statisticians use to manipulate economic, meteorological, biological, and physical data taken from observations recorded over time. The decomposition tools include index numbers, moving averages, relative time frameworks, and the use of differences (i.e., subtracting one observation from the previous value in the series). This history is accessible to students with a basic knowledge of statistics, as well as financial analysts, statisticians, and historians of economic thought and science."--BOOK JACKET.

This is a welcome biography of Edgeworth. Peter Groenewegen, Economic History Review Barbè s book is bound to become the bibliographical reference on Edgeworth. Alberto Baccini, Storia del Pensiero Economico This biography is especially welcome in providing a considerable amount of fresh information about Edgeworth s life and background. From the preface by John Creedy, University of Melbourne, Australia Lluís Barbé has recreated the background and life of Francis Ysidro Edgeworth through a fascinating reconstruction that succeeds in shaping the first detailed biography ever published of this major economist and statistician. Originating from previously unexplored letters and documents stored in archives and registers in Ireland, England and Catalonia, Edgeworth s relationships with his academic fellows including Sully, Jevons, Marshall, Galton, Pearson, Walras, Pantaleoni, Fisher, Pareto, Keynes are meticulously depicted. Stemming from undiscovered primary sources, this book also reveals a detailed insight into the academic world of the period 1875 1925 in the fields of economics and statistics. With a descriptive survey of Edgeworth s work, this book will prove a captivating read for academics and postgraduate students in economic analysis, the history of economic thought and the history of statistics. Anyone with an interest in Francis Ysidro Edgeworth s life should also read this book.

Written by leading statisticians and probabilists, this volume consists of 104 biographical articles on eminent contributors to statistical and probabilistic ideas born prior to the 20th Century. Among the statisticians covered are Fermat, Pascal, Huygens, Neumann, Bernoulli, Bayes, Laplace, Legendre, Gauss, Poisson, Pareto, Markov, Bachelier, Borel, and many more.

This book is a collection of original essays grouped into four parts under the headings “Greece and European integration,” “Issues in the Methodology of Economics,” “Institutions and the Free Market Economy,” and “Insights for Today from Ancient Greece.” The essays appeal to both researchers in the corresponding fields of knowledge and also to policy makers who are looking for ideas and approaches to confront present day challenges. In particular, given the present state of turmoil in the European Union, the international economy, and democracies in general, most of the essays offer new insights for economic and social policies.

The history of economic thought has always attracted some of the brightest minds in the discipline. These chroniclers of development have helped form our current views, and it is no surprise that many among them have been at the forefront of new movements in the history of ideas. This notable collection summarizes the work of these key historians of economics and attempts to quantify their impact. Some of the writers covered, such as Friedrich Hayek and Joan Robinson, are already assured of their place among the greatest economists of the twentieth century, but the collection also stresses the influence of those still active in shaping our perceptions - including Mark Blaug, Samuel Hollander and Donald Winch. Written by an impressive roster of contributors, many of whom are themselves well-known in the history of economic thought, this key book features writings from John Creedy, Roger Blackhouse and Neil De Marchi, as well as the editors of the collection as a whole, Warren J. Samuels and Steven Medema.

This collection explores emerging areas in the history of economics and provides a valuable insight into contemporary research in the field. The papers focus on four areas: * Science and Economics. Authors investigate how science is perceived and how its history is related, details early history of probability and examine 'cyberpunk' - a science fiction genre that draws heavily on modern economic ideas * David Ricardo's contribution to international trade theory. Texts by David Ricardo are re-examined to provide a framework for a more consistent and coherent interpretation of Ricardo and to demonstrate how history of economic thought approaches can be applied to the treatment of current theory and policy concerns * The contributions of individual economists including Joseph A. Schumpeter, Werner Sombart and John Maynard Keynes and a comparison of Hicks' and Lindahl's views on monetary stability * Economics and events before Adam Smith. An investigation into English policies toward Ireland at the time of Cromwell's occupation is followed by explorations of the ideas of Vincent de Gourney and debates in French economic journals in the period 1750-1770.

For a country that can boast a distinguished tradition of political economy from Sir William Petty through Swift, Berkeley, Hutcheson, Burke and Cantillon through to that of Longfield, Cairnes, Bastable, Edgeworth, Geary and Gorman, it is surprising that no systematic study of Irish political economy has been undertaken. In this book the contributors redress this glaring omission in the history of political economy, for the first time providing an overview of developments in Irish political economy from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Logistically this is achieved through the provision of individual contributions from a group of recognized experts, both Irish and international, who address the contribution of major historical figures in Irish political economy along the analysis of major thematic issues, schools of thought and major policy debates within the Irish context over this extended period.

The title ― The Economy in its House ― echoes Xenophon’s book, Œconomicus, which focuses on the relationship of a house with its environment rather than on trade. It also makes reference to a question from Socrates: "What is a house?". It is by striving to explore these relationships and questions, reflecting the conditions of our time, that we have concluded that the economy is in its house ― and that changes everything. Indeed, this leads us to establish a foundation ― new but grafted onto ancient roots ― for economics. By integrating into our theory the unpredictable environment, we provide economists with a framework to address the multiple issues that arise not only in our common home, the Earth, but also to all other houses. Our model is based on the hypothesis of the random nature of the economy, which brings us closer to modern physics and its methods. On these pillars, our model abstracts economic agents and focuses attention on the interconnected constituents of the house, both their mutual statistical relationships, and those they have with the environment. The covariance matrix that retraces such relationships indicates how the environment disrupts, on average, each constituent during a period. This gives the possibility to explore the destinies of the houses in the short, middle or long run, through crises and changing perspectives of ruin. It makes it possible to identify three essential variables: the growth factor, the growth energy, and finally the prices’ root, which is also the weight of the unit of account and an anti-ruin coefficient. One of the characteristics of modern houses is that, among their constituents, positive covariances outweigh negative covariances. Hence their growth: we explore its links with the reduction of inequalities, and its pathologies: pollution and depletion of resources. We shows how we can fight against crises and inequalities through greater solidarity. We show that one can model any house by use of a miniature house ― its soul ― with two components (the hearth and the roof), and three guiding parameters: exposure to hazards, security, and performance. With these guides, one expresses all the macroeconomic variables relative to a house. These are preserved by passing from a house ― whatever its importance ― to its soul. The wealth of the results obtained shows that the path open must allow economists to go farther and safer in their work while also enabling a broader public to better understand what the economy is.

Arthur Lyon Bowley, the founding father of modern statistics, was an important and colorful figure and a leader in cementing the foundations of statistical methodology, including survey methodology, and of the applications of statistics to economical and social issues during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In many respects, he was ahead of his time.The giants in this field around that time were largely concentrated in the British Isles and Scandinavian countries; among these contributors, Arthur Bowley was one of the most active in revolutionizing statistical methodology and its economic applications. However, Bowley has been vastly undervalued by subsequent commentators — while hundreds of articles and books have been written on Karl Pearson, those on Arthur Bowley amount to a dozen or less. This book seeks to remedy this and fill in an important omission in the monographical literature on the history of statistics. In particular, the recent resurgence of interest in poverty research has led to a renewed interest in Bowley's legacy.