You Gotta Know Economists

Adam Smith

(Scottish, 1723-1790): Though he wrote on nearly every subject of moral and social philosophy, he is basically remembered as the author of An Inquiry into the nature and causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) and as the creator of the metaphor of the "invisible hand." This work more-or-less single-handedly founded the Classical school of economics.

Milton Friedman

(American, 1912-2006) Conservative thinker famous for his advocacy of monetarism (a revision of the quantity theory of money) in works like A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960 (1963). He is strongly associated with the ideals of laissez-faire government policy.

Karl Marx

(German, 1818-1883) Also a historian and social philosopher, this economists principal contribution to economic thought was extending the labor theory of value to its logical conclusion, his theory of surplus value. This theory, along with his defense of economic materialism, appeared in Das Kapital.

John Maynard Keynes

(English, 1883-1946) He is most famous for The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), which judged most of classical economic analysis to be a special case (hence "General Theory") and argued that the best way to deal with prolonged recessions was deficit spending.

David Ricardo

(English, 1772-1823) This economist is best known for Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, which introduced more-or-less modern notions of comparative advantage and its theoretical justification for unfettered international trade. He also put forth the so-called iron law of wages.

John Kenneth Galbraith

(Canadian, 1908-2006) His liberal popular writings like The Affluent Society and The New Industrial State (with their emphasis on public service and the limitations of the marketplace) ensure his coming up again and again.

Francois Quesnay

(French, 1694-1774): This economist was the undisputed leader of the Physiocrats, the first systematic school of economic thought. Among its tenets were the economic and moral righteousness of laissez-faire policies and the notion that land is the ultimate source of all wealth.

Alfred Marshall

(English, 1842-1924) This economists magnum opus, 1890's Principles of Economics, introduced the notions of consumer surplus, quasi-rent, demand curves, and elasticity, all fundamental concepts in introductory macro- and microeconomics.

Thorstein Veblen

(American, 1857-1929): This economist is primarily remembered for his The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), which introduced phrases like "conspicuous consumption." He is remembered for likening the ostentation of the rich to the Darwinian proofs of virility found in the animal kingdom.

John Stuart Mill

(English, 1806-1873): Also a social philosopher, This economists is mainly known in economic circles today for his work extending the ideas of Ricardo in Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy (1844) (for example, the relationship between profits and wages), and also for exhaustively examining the necessity of private property in his Principles of Political Economy (1848).