> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://laurence-wilse-samson.gitbook.io/textbooks/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://laurence-wilse-samson.gitbook.io/textbooks/an-introduction-to-economic-thought/readme.md).

# About This Book

> **Revised full draft, last updated November 2026.** One of 22 textbooks freely readable online ([all books](https://lwilsesamson.com/textbooks/)), all written with AI assistance. All rights reserved. Corrections are welcome at <laurence@lwilsesamson.com>.

***

Economics textbooks typically present theory as settled science—supply and demand, equilibrium, optimization—as if these ideas emerged fully formed and obviously correct. But every concept students learn today was once controversial, every framework won a contested battle against alternatives, and many defeated ideas contained insights we've since forgotten.

This book takes a different approach. Instead of marching chronologically from Adam Smith to the present, each chapter begins with a puzzle that economists still debate today: Why do things cost what they cost? Do people actually maximize? When do markets work? Why are some countries rich and others poor? Each chapter then traces how economists across centuries have grappled with these questions—what they discovered, what they assumed away, and what remains unresolved.

The goal is not antiquarian. It is to show that the "foundations" of economics are less secure than textbooks suggest, that heterodox traditions often asked better questions than they're given credit for, and that many contemporary debates are revivals of old arguments in new dress. Understanding where our ideas came from helps us see their limits—and possibilities for thinking differently.

***

## Book Outline

### Part 1: Microeconomic Foundations

**Chapter 1: Value and Price** — Why do things cost what they cost? From the medieval just price through the marginalist revolution to behavioral pricing and platform economics.

**Chapter 2: Choice and Rationality** — Do people maximize? Bentham's felicific calculus, the revealed preference revolution, behavioral economics, and emerging alternatives.

**Chapter 3: Markets and Competition** — When do markets work? Adam Smith's nuanced vision, perfect competition formalized, market failure, and the market design revolution.

**Chapter 4: Information and Uncertainty** — What do we know when we trade? Knight on uncertainty, Hayek on knowledge, asymmetric information, and mechanism design.

**Chapter 5: Firms and Organizations** — Why do firms exist? From the classical black box through Coase and Williamson to platform capitalism.

**Chapter 6: Labor and Wages** — What determines pay? Subsistence theories, marginal productivity, human capital, and the monopsony revival.

**Chapter 7: Welfare and Distribution** — Can we rank outcomes? Utilitarianism, Pareto efficiency, Arrow's impossibility, capabilities, and inequality measurement.

**Chapter 8: Evidence and Causation** — How do we know what we know? From political arithmetic through the Frisch–Tinbergen founding of econometrics and Keynes's objections to it, structural estimation, and the credibility revolution.

### Part 2: Macroeconomic Puzzles

**Chapter 9: Growth and Development** — Why are some countries rich? Classical accumulation, the Solow residual, endogenous growth, and the institutions debate.

**Chapter 10: Money and Prices** — What is money and why does it matter? Bullionist debates, quantity theory, Keynesian liquidity preference, and the money view.

**Chapter 11: Business Cycles** — Why do economies fluctuate? Classical denial, the impulse–propagation idea, the Keynesian revolution, real business cycles, and financial frictions.

**Chapter 12: Unemployment** — Why can't everyone find work? Say's Law, Keynes, the Phillips curve, NAIRU, and search theory.

**Chapter 13: Inflation** — What causes rising prices? Quantity theory, cost-push versus demand-pull, rational expectations, and contemporary puzzles.

**Chapter 14: Finance and Crises** — Why do financial systems collapse? From tulipmania through Bagehot and Minsky to the 2008 crisis and beyond.

**Chapter 15: International Coordination** — How should nations interact economically? Mercantilism, comparative advantage, Bretton Woods, and the impossible trinity.

### Part 3: Forgotten Questions I

**Chapter 16: The Moral Economy** — Should prices be "fair"? The just price tradition, its displacement, and its return in behavioral findings on fairness.

**Chapter 17: Economic Power** — Who controls whom? Classical political economy on power, its marginalist evacuation, and contemporary revival.

**Chapter 18: Calculation and Coordination** — Can economies be planned? The socialist calculation debate, the mixed-economy planning it overlooked (wartime allocation, the French Plan, Tinbergen's Netherlands), cybernetics, and platform capitalism as planning.

### Part 4: Forgotten Questions II

**Chapter 19: Capitalism as a System** — What kind of economy is this? Marx, Weber, Polanyi, world-systems theory, varieties of capitalism, financialization and platforms, and China as the test case.

**Chapter 20: Population and Resources** — Are there limits? Malthus, demographic transition, environmental economics, and planetary boundaries.

**Chapter 21: The Good Economy** — What is economics for? From Aristotelian oikonomia through GDP to wellbeing economics and the question of purpose.

### Conclusion

**What Economics Forgot and What It Might Remember** — The recurring patterns of formalization and forgetting, and the recoveries now under way.

### Apparatus

A [note on method](/textbooks/an-introduction-to-economic-thought/why_questions.md) says what the question-led structure gains and loses. A [Chronology](/textbooks/an-introduction-to-economic-thought/back-matter/chronology.md) puts the works, prizes and events the chapters discuss back in date order, and an [Index of Nobel Lectures](/textbooks/an-introduction-to-economic-thought/back-matter/nobel_lectures.md) lists every lecture the chapters use, with the chapter that treats it at most length. A glossary, bibliography and index of names complete the back matter.

***

## About the Author

I am an economist in New York. I am Associate Director at Oxford Economics, I teach as an adjunct at NYU Wagner and Columbia SIPA, and I am a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Johannesburg's Centre for Competition, Regulation and Economic Development. I took my PhD in economics at Columbia. More at [lwilsesamson.com](https://lwilsesamson.com/).

***

## How this book was made

I wrote this book with substantial help from AI language models, principally Claude (Anthropic), which I used for drafting, editing, research synthesis, and consistency checking. The outline, the argument, the selection of material and the judgments throughout are mine, as is the responsibility for what remains wrong. Figures were generated from code using the sources identified in their captions; illustrative figures are labelled.

In October 2026 I revised the whole text in two further passes, also with AI help: one to remove the stock phrasing that AI drafts produce, and one to bring the prose closer to my own academic writing.

I then had every checkable claim in the text (946 in all: numbers, quotations, attributions, dates and reported findings) compared with a primary source, using AI tools for the lookups and reviewing each change myself. Each claim was confirmed, corrected, softened or cut, except 46 for which no primary source could be reached; those were left as written. This was a claim-by-claim check, not a line-by-line proofread, and errors surely remain.

Please report errors to <laurence@lwilsesamson.com>. Corrections usually go live the same day.

*Last updated: November 2026*