Paul Samuelson Economics Pdf Free Download

aul A. Samuelson's legendary textbook, straightforwardly titled Eco- nomics, most famously exemplifies Samuelson the writer. To mark the release of the eighteenth edition of the textbook in July 2004, this paper briefly considers the textbook, and the celebrity (and criticism) it attracted. Economists and academics in general don't have much difficultly appreciat- ing Samuelson's extraordinary contribution. Simply reading Samuelson's text Foundations of Economic Analysis (1947) or browsing through the plethora of intellectual jewels displayed in the many volumes of The Collected Scien- tific Papers of Paul A. Samuelson (1966-86) makes these contributions self- explanatory. But one of the most compelling characteristics of Paul Samuel- son is his ability to communicate equally well to all audiences, whether academics, students forced to take an economics class for the first time, or the average individual. If you limited your reading to Samuelson's academic writings, which are characterized by an unyielding surge of theoretical rigor, one might get the impression that one was dealing with an alien of sorts; a creature simply too brilliant to communicate with the average human, and whose ideas could only be understood by a select few academics. Yet Samuel- son's true brilliance is his ability to flawlessly tune his writing to any audi- ence, whether mathematically inclined economists and graduate students,

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ARON A. G OTTESMAN is an assistant professor of finance at the Lubin School of Business,

Pace University. L

ALL RAMRATTAN is a professor of economics at the University of Califor-

nia, Hayward. M

ICHAEL SZENBERG is a distinguished professor of economics at the Lubin

School of Business, Pace University. The authors thank Paul Samuelson for a valuable con-

versation, close to three hours in duration. The authors also thank the editor, Joseph

Salerno, for useful suggestions. The authors are currently completing a biography of Paul

Samuelson for Jorge Pinto Books titled

Paul A. Samuelson: The Making of an Economist

with a foreword by Joseph Stiglitz (Pinto Books, 2005).

S AMUELSON

CONOMICS

HE C ONTINUING L EGACY

RON

A. GOTTESMAN , L ALL R AMRATTAN ,

AND M ICHAEL SZENBERG

Men with vision walk in the middle.

Tosefta: Baba Kama, 2.12

aul A. Samuelson's legendary textbook, straightforwardly titled

Eco-

nomics

, most famously exemplifies Samuelson the writer. To mark the

release of the eighteenth edition of the textbook in July 2004, this paper

briefly considers the textbook, and the celebrity (and criticism) it attracted.

Economists and academics in general don't have much difficultly appreciat-

ing Samuelson's extraordinary contribution. Simply reading Samuelson's text

Foundations of Economic Analysis

(1947) or browsing through the plethora

of intellectual jewels displayed in the many volumes of

The Collected Scien-

tific Papers of Paul A. Samuelson

(1966–86) makes these contributions self-

explanatory. But one of the most compelling characteristics of Paul Samuel-

son is his ability to communicate equally well to all audiences, whether

academics, students forced to take an economics class for the first time, or

the average individual. If you limited your reading to Samuelson's academic

writings, which are characterized by an unyielding surge of theoretical rigor,

one might get the impression that one was dealing with an alien of sorts; a

creature simply too brilliant to communicate with the average human, and

whose ideas could only be understood by a select few academics. Yet Samuel-

son's true brilliance is his ability to flawlessly tune his writing to any audi-

ence, whether mathematically inclined economists and graduate students,

THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS VOL. 8, NO. 2 (SUMMER 2005): 95–104

introductory students reading his textbook

Economics

, readers of his past

Newsweek

magazine column, or the government agencies and politicians he

advised, including John F. Kennedy.

Indeed, one can argue that this is

Samuelson's most important virtuosity.

Samuelson's textbook presented Keynesian thought to generations of

American and foreign economics students—a fact that made many unhappy. In

Economics

, Samuelson developed original methods of conveying Keynes's

ideas. For example, Samuelson's

Keynesian Cross

, which graphically relates

total spending to measures such as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), rep-

resented an easy-to-understand explication of the source of the key problems,

such as unemployment, that plagued the United States during the Great

Depression—and suggested that government spending might be the solution.

Samuelson's advocacy of the use of government spending led him to be cate-

gorized as a fiscal Keynesian in the same school of thought as one of his pro-

fessors at Harvard, Alvin Hansen. The Keynesian Revolution stimulated

Samuelson, like most economists. But as scholarship progressed, so too did

Samuelson's thinking. Samuelson argues that to him, "Keynesianism was

never a religion. 'What have you done for me lately?' was always the battle cry.

Besides, the American Keynesians . . . were evolving beyond Model T Nean-

derthal Keynesianism. I race along with the

avant garde

(Samuelson 1997, p.

155). When a new movement developed that attempted to synthesize Keyne-

sian and neoclassical thought into equilibrium models, known as the neo-

classical synthesis, Samuelson embraced it as well. This new movement is

attributed to the English economist John R. Hicks, the 1972 Nobel laureate,

whose ideas were published as early as 1937 (Hicks 1937, pp. 147–59). These

ideas became popular in American economic circles, somewhat belatedly,

after Alvin Hansen presented them in his 1953 book

A Guide to Keynes

, with

Samuelson following suit (Hansen 1953).

Indeed, Samuelson remarks that there are very few "Keynesians" any-

more. Says Samuelson, "Few of my MIT students will call themselves 'Keyne-

sians' as Solow, Modigliani, and I might. They are 'neo-Keynesians,' 'neo-neo-

Keynesians,' and even 'anti-Keynes Keynesians.' But make no mistake about

it. Their writings and views are light-years away from the macro I learned at

the University of Chicago. And the common core of their beliefs is scarcely

96 THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS VOL. 8, NO. 2 (SUMMER 2005)

It is not only Samuelson's writing that are well tuned. Laurence J. Kotlikoff of Boston

University recalls a recent speech that Samuelson gave at Boston University.

I had him give a talk to BU students last year and 500 students showed

up. He was amazing. He spoke for an hour and, as is his way, engaged in

digressions within digressions to the point that I was wondering when

and if he'd get back to the main point. But sure enough, he brought

everything back to square one in the last five minutes, tying each and

every one of the links and loops together. (Private correspondence,

2004)

country miles away from the vulgar IS-LM diagrammatics that Harrod, Hicks,

and Hansen distilled out of Maynard's intuitive explorations" (Samuelson

2004a).

How did

Economics

come to be written? Samuelson recalls how the

department head of the department of economics at MIT, Ralph Freeman,

beseeched Samuelson to write an economics textbook. For Freeman had a

problem: MIT forced its juniors to take a compulsory course in economics.

"They hate it," moaned Freeman, "We've tried everything. They still hate it"

(Samuelson 1997, p. 154). Freeman made Samuelson an offer he couldn't

refuse: "Paul, will you go on half time for a semester or two? Write a text the

students will like. If they like it, yours will be good economics. Leave out

whatever you like. Be as short as you wish. Whatever you come up with, that

will be a vast improvement on where we are" (ibid.). As we know, Samuelson

accepted, and took the task seriously; three years later the book was ready for

publication, "after night and summer slaving and following up on uncount-

able mimeograph handouts" (ibid.).

Samuelson published the first edition of the textbook with McGraw-Hill in

1948, though there was extensive interest by other publishers.

The original

McGraw-Hill representative assigned to Paul Samuelson was an individual

named Basil Dandison. Harold W. McGraw, chairman emeritus of McGraw-

Hill, recalls that Dandison first met Samuelson at Harvard seven years earlier

on December 8, 1941, after being introduced by a Harvard professor, Seymour

Harris (McGraw 1999). The Dandison-Samuelson relationship was quite ami-

able. In 1999, at the age of 97, Basil Dandison was still praising Samuelson:

"It was a great thing for McGraw-Hill when Paul Samuelson decided to sign

up with us."

And to this Samuelson replied, "What a gentleman!"

Now, the amiable relationship between Samuelson and McGraw-Hill

should come as no surprise:

Economics

was a huge success. The first edition

(1948) sold 121,453 copies and the second edition (1951) sold l37,256.

The

high water mark was the sixth edition, which sold 441,941 textbooks. The

eleventh edition (1980), the last that Samuelson sole authored, sold 196,185

textbooks; and sales remained strong for the twelfth (1985) and later editions,

SAMUELSON'S

ECONOMICS

: THE CONTINUING LEGACY 97

Samuelson describes how two dozen publishers were "clamoring" for his text, yet he

choose McGraw-Hill for the following reasons: "Reason 1: Macmillan and Prentice-Hall, the

other giants back then, already had best-selling textbooks; McGraw-Hill did not . Reason 2:

What clinched the deal was that McGraw-Hill had published the scholarly 2-volume trea-

tise

Business Cycles

by my Harvard teacher Joseph Schumpeter and had also published

the 15-volume compendium on what had been learned at the MIT Radiation Laboratory

where I had spent the War" (Samuelson 1999, pp 353–55).

As recollected by Samuelson (1999) in his contribution to "Samuelson's

Economics

at Fifty: Remarks on the Occasion of the Anniversary of Publication."

All figures provided in this paragraph are from (Skousen 1997a). Skousen bases the

annual book sales figures on Elzinga (1992, pp. 861–79).

which were co-authored with William D. Nordhaus, a leading professor of eco-

nomics at Yale University.

In total,

Economics

had sold more than 4 million

copies, and was translated into 41 languages. The book remains popular

today, or as Nordhaus enthusiastically puts it, "The book is alive. Long live the

book!" (Nordhaus in Samuelson 1999).

Interestingly, Samuelson never received an advance—an idea that most text-

book authors would consider preposterous today.

And while Samuelson

enjoys the considerable wealth that the success of his text brought, he's dis-

covered that one is rich "if you have a little more money than those around

you" (Samuelson 1999). On his decision to accept lower royalties for interna-

tional English-language editions, Samuelson explains, "My interest was not so

much in dollars as in influencing minds (ibid.).

The huge success of

Economics

turned Samuelson into a celebrity. "A new

layer of fame that I never dreamed of evolved," Samuelson reveals,

I was besieged by groupies reminiscent of Talmudic students crowding

around famous rabbis. The policeman at the door of the White House

whispers, "I am using your book at Georgetown night school." The chap

who sells me a newspaper at Harvard Square confides that at Northeast-

ern he studied my book. . . . Wherever I go in Europe, Asia, or Latin Amer-

ica, strangers greet me as an old friend or old tormenter. I have never been

to India, Russia, or China, but in my MIT office, I am asked to autograph

copies of translations. (Samuelson 1999, p. 354)

Economics

grew into something more than just another obscure textbook;

its wide popularity meant that it strongly influenced the way that economists,

the American public, and the entire world perceived economics.

This also

meant that Paul Samuelson faced a tremendous amount of pressure to stress

one issue over another, and faced significant criticism by those who disagreed

98 THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS VOL. 8, NO. 2 (SUMMER 2005)

The latest edition as of this time is the sixteenth edition. See www.mhhe.com/eco-

nomics/samuelson/.

For example, Harvard economics professor Gregory Mankiw, who was appointed as

Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors in 2003, received a $1.4 million advance

in 1997 for his

Principles of Economics

. See Mankiw (2004).

The degree to which Samuelson's textbook influenced students internationally

should never be underestimated. Elhanan Helpman, the Israeli economist, recalls how, as

a young man, he discovered

a thick volume that was the Hebrew version of Samuelson's textbook.

The translation was terrible. It employed convoluted Hebrew terms for

simple economic concepts. Nevertheless, I fell in love with the book's

content. What struck me most was the realization that one can in fact

think systematically about complex social phenomena and describe

them in precise language. All this was new to me, and my fascination

grew with every page. (Helpman 1998)

For one academic's reflection on how

Economics

influenced his life, see Brady (2002).

with his slant. Indeed, one cynical way of measuring the importance of a book

is through observing the degree of criticism it receives. Interestingly, criticism

Economics

began before the textbook was even published. Samuelson never

forgot how a preliminary version of the textbook, distributed to his students

before publication, faced a tremendous amount of opposition from some MIT

alumni and board members—two groups that no academic can easily ignore

(Samuelson 1997, p. 159). One of these critics even listed 100 "heresies" in the

text, and waved off Samuelson's attempts to respond, griping, "The whole

tone is wrong. You do not inculcate sound economics. That is your trouble"

(ibid.). The same critic wanted the textbook vetted before publication

occurred. Eventually, the president of MIT at the time, Karl Compton, stepped

in, threatening to resign if Samuelson was censored. He was successful, as you

know, and

Economics

was put to sea.

Economics

grew increasingly popular, the criticism amplified.

Samuelson remarks, "In one lifetime, while adhering to the same eclectic lib-

eralism, I have been at first denounced as

avant garde

and later castigated as

a running jackal of capitalism" (Samuelson 1999, p. 354). But Samuelson

understands the game. In the introduction to the fifteenth edition of

Eco-

nomics

, Samuelson writes,

People differ about economic policies. Tempers flare out, arguments are

shrill, and different schools and ideologies grow up—each convinced that

its view of the simple truth is the one-and-only correct version. After a life-

time in the trenches, my advice to beginning students when you contem-

plate any such hot debate is this: Hang on to your wallet. Economic laws

are truly complicated. (Samuelson and Nordhaus 1995)

One fascinating example of criticism is the 1977, 2-volume book

Anti-

Samuelson

, written by Marc Linder, who is currently a professor of law at the

University of Iowa.

Anti-Samuelson

represented "an attempt to follow S in his

presentation of bourgeois theory" (Linder and Sensat 1977 p. x). "S," of

course, refers to Samuelson; and the criticism is from the left wing of ideo-

logical thought, and clearly heartfelt—it's a very long book. The book is

SAMUELSON'S

ECONOMICS

: THE CONTINUING LEGACY 99

Samuelson's fame has grown to the point where even his personality has been placed

under the academic microscope. See Price (2002).

As another example of this aspect of Samuelson's character, Perry Mehrling of

Columbia University relates how Samuelson:

mentioned that he had heard about a piece I had written on Irving

Fisher. I have no idea how he heard about it, but I offered to send him a

copy and within a few days I got back a letter, dated 27 May 2003. . . .

He had read the paper and wanted to set down his own interpretation,

but then he closes the letter with a remarkable line that I treasure: "Do

disregard my heresies and follow your own star." (Private correspon-

dence 2004)

organized in direct relation to specific chapters of Samuelson's text. The fol-

lowing is characteristic of the criticism:

His attention is focused on the "problems" of the present and their possi-

ble solution

within

capitalism. This is S's unspoken value judgment: as a

practical man, a "citizen," he supports capitalism and opposes socialism.

Accordingly, he tries to foist these values on his reader. That, of course, is

his prerogative, but it would be nice if he would at least warn the unwary

reader. However, matters change when he disseminates these views in the

guise of scientist. . . . But S's theory is not simply demagoguery. By far the

more significant aspect of the ideological role of bourgeois economic the-

ory is its unconscious refusal to recognize the possibility of the existence

of problems serious enough to cause the demise of the capitalist mode of

production. (Linder and Sensat 1977, p. 5)

As active participants in a capitalist society, it is dangerously easy for us to dis-

card this criticism as radical. Yet it is also true that Samuelson's coverage of

Marx and socialism has evolved over time, and it is no wonder that leftists

experienced a sense of abandonment.

The libertarian and Austrian economist Murray Rothbard heavily criti-

cized

Economics

as well (Rothbard 1997, pp. 518–22). Stylistically, Rothbard

found the text to be a "

potpourri

. . . of bits and smidgens of technique and of

data, none of them integrated into any sort of digestible or comprehensive

whole." Rothbard writes that

my heart goes out to the poor bewildered undergraduate, confronted with

this gigantic stew, ranging from opinionated wisecracks to the Giffen

Paradox to marginal productivity analysis to Harrod-Domar-Modigliani

growth models to notes on economists past and present to the latest ultra-

sophistication in reswitching analysis. What in the world can he make of

all this? It is no wonder that economics is almost universally the most dis-

liked subject in the college curriculum. The undergraduate is presented

with no clear and coherent picture, no cogent guidelines on what eco-

nomics is all about. (Rothbard 1997, pp. 254–55)

To Rothbard, Samuelson's textbook typified what Rothbard believed to be

the "major ills" of American economics:

the sterile emphasis on the conditions of a static equilibrium which never

can (and never should) exist, and the repeated sonorities of the Keynesian

model presented without so much as indicating its major flaws and falla-

cies. (Rothbard 1997, pp. 255–56)

The text, according to Rothbard, "scarcely equips the reader for facing the real

world of ever-accelerating inflation or of the recurring reality of inflationary

recession" (p. 256).

Rothbard is particularly troubled by Samuelson's coverage of theories

related to business cycles. Writes Rothbard, the Austrian theory is almost

scandalously treated as follows (in its entirety):

100 THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS VOL. 8, NO. 2 (SUMMER 2005)

The

over

-investment theory . . . claims too much rather than too little invest-

ment causes recessions (Hayek, Mises, et al.). Here it is at least Samuelson's

responsibility to explain the theory at some length, and to point out (a) that

the "over-investment" is caused by continuous monetary inflation by the

banks, and (b) that the result of the bank credit expansion is overinvest-

ment in the "higher orders" of capital goods, matched by underinvestment

in the consumer-goods industries. (Rothbard 1997, p. 258)

The main difference between Samuelson and the Austrian School is one of

methodology. Samuelson explicated the difference when he wrote that the Aus-

trian economists believe that "by thinking in one's study one could arrive at

the basic immutable laws of political economy" (Samuelson 1947, vol. 5, p. 7).

To illustrate, it is well-known that Mises started his economics from the Action

axiom and that Hayek started his economics from abstract laws such as the

love for self interest. Samuelson contrasted his position with the statement that

"my first and last allegiance is to the facts" (ibid.). So for Samuelson, reality is

the paradigm. He applied this against the overinvestment theory of Hayek thus:

Hayek's 1931

Prices and Production

did pique analysts' curiosity. But its

author never could tie up his metaphors concerning artificial lenghtenings

of the period of production through overissue of M, followed by a result-

ant shortening of the period, with the actual depression process taking

place in the real world. (Ibid., p. 288)

Also consider Mark Skousen, whose extensive review of the evolving nature

Economics

was published in a 1997 article (Skousen 1997a). Wrote Skousen,

In reading Samuelson's earlier editions, a student might reasonably con-

clude that there are no other schools of thought, at least in the main-

stream. In fact, of course, Keynesian thought was the subject of furious

debate in economics departments across the country through the 1940s

and into the 1950s, as young economists steeped in Keynesian thinking

entered professorial jobs and collided with the old guard. In the late 1950s

and 1960s, as economists explored how certain modeling structures could

express either Keynesian or monetarist insights, it was fair to claim broad

acceptance of the "neo-classical synthesis" as a modeling strategy.

(Skousen 1997a, pp. 139–40)

In an article in

Forbes Magazine

, Skousen continued the attack:

Samuelson spent whole chapters in serious discussion of the socialist eco-

nomics of the Soviet Union and China, while writing little or nothing on

the success stories of West Germany, Japan, the East Asian Tigers or Chile.

. . . He had numerous sections on "market failure," while offering little on

"government failure." He criticized laissez-faire, favored progressive taxa-

tion and endorsed the pay as you go Social Security program. (Skousen

1997b, p. 198)

SAMUELSON'S

ECONOMICS

: THE CONTINUING LEGACY 101

See also William F. Buckley, Jr.'s seminal book,

God and Man at Yale

(1978).

Indeed, Samuelson takes clear positions in the ideological battles, and

some positions were later modified.

While Samuelson remains proud of the

early editions, he recognizes that, in hindsight, he may well have made some

changes. Rereading the 1948 edition fifty years after publication, Samuelson

was quite impressed. "To my surprise, it read much better than I could ever

have suspected. No wonder it was an instant bestseller, which set a new pat-

tern for all the late twentieth-century economic textbooks" (Samuelson 1999).

Yet he was also self critical, admitting that he had to

wince at various nonoptimalities that are obvious from hindsight. Fiscal

policy was given too much emphasis at the expense of monetary policy.

Yes. Can this be excused by the fact that not until the 1951 Accord did the

Federal Reserve get back its freedom to exercise an autonomous monetary

policy? Admittedly, that is an excuse in part. But is it not a duty for the

economics writer to pound on the table and nag against bad institutional

policies? (Samuelson 1999, p. 353)

What critics fail to recognize, Samuelson argues, is the era in which the

early editions of the textbook were written. The key question to ask is not

whether the text overemphasized one stream of thought over another. After all,

Samuelson reminds us, Milton Friedman's early writing never incorporated

Friedman's own later work. Instead, the question that Samuelson poses is

"Was the Samuelson elementary text lagging behind the plethora of emerging

intermediate macroeconomic textbooks in the 1948–1985 era or a pioneering

engine in evolutionary progress?" (Samuelson 1997, p. 155). As an inexact sci-

ence, economic thought evolves in response to new developments; perception

of reality today may well be perceived as unrealistic tomorrow. "Funeral by

funeral," argues Samuelson, "economics does make progress. Darwinian

impact of reality melts away even the prettiest of fanciful theories and the

hottest of ideological frenzies. But there are fits and starts along the way." Or

more briefly, as Samuelson puts it, "be wrong, but don't stay wrong."

Why was

Economics

so successful? There was, after all, significant com-

petition, as Samuelson recalls, such as

Principles of Economics

by Frederic

Garver and Alvin Hansen (1938);

Economic Principles, Problems and Policies

by William Kiekhoffer (1936);

Modern Economic Society

by Sumner Slichter

(1931); and

Elementary Economics

by Fred Fairchild, Edgar Fumiss, and Nor-

man Buck (1936); among several other textbooks in the running. Samuelson

102 THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS VOL. 8, NO. 2 (SUMMER 2005)

One position that has been attacked repeatedly by the right was Samuelson's evalu-

ation of the Soviet economy. The following quote, from the thirteenth edition of

Econom-

ics

(1989, p. 837), is perceived as particularly bothersome: "The Soviet economy is proof

that, contrary to what many skeptics had earlier believed, the socialist command economy

can function and even thrive."

More broadly, Samuelson notes that present day economists have shifted to the right

(Private conversation 2004).

Ibid.

attributes the success of

Economics

to "book content," noting that competing

texts failed to address the compelling problems of the day. "When 5,000 banks

failed and mortgage delinquencies were in the millions, the bestselling texts

limned the certainties of Say's Law!" (Samuelson 1997, p. 154). And many

attribute the coverage Samuelson gave to the Keynesian revolution as

Eco-

nomics

' most important characteristic. But Robert Solow disagrees, arguing,

the introduction of Keynesian ideas was not the major innovation. Paul's

was probably the first truly postwar textbook, in the sense that it repre-

sented economics as it was in the postwar period and as it became, largely

because of Paul's other career as a writer of economics for economists.

(Solow in Samuelson 1999)

Indeed, the success of

Economics

likely flowed from a combination of

these factors discussed above. And the fact that Samuelson was a leading econ-

omist with a reputation as

wunderkind

must have also influenced professors

to assign

Economics

to their students. But what is undeniable, regardless of

one's ideological perspective, is that

Economics

is wonderfully written. As the

economist Stanley Fischer, President of Citigroup International and a former

MIT economist, magnificently puts it,

To read

Economics

is to have a glimpse of the extraordinary mind that cre-

ated it: undogmatic, generous to predecessors and contemporaries, ency-

clopedic, of course brilliant, and, most remarkably, skeptical, not inclined

to take itself too seriously. Those are not properties that come in that-

combination very often, least of all in a textbook. (Fischer in Samuelson

1999, p. 363)

And from this, we all continue to benefit.

REFERENCES

Brady, Michael Emmett. 2002. "The Role of Samuelson's

Economics

in the Production of

a Keynesian Economist." In

Paul Samuelson and the Foundations of Modern Eco-

nomics

. K. Puttaswamaiah, ed. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers.

Buckley, William F., Jr. 1978.

God and Man at Yale

. Chicago: Regnery.

Elzinga, Kenneth G. 1992. "The Eleven Principles of Economics."

Southern Economic Jour-

nal

58, no. 4 (April): 861–79.

Fairchild, Fred R., Edgar S. Furniss, and Norman S. Buck. 1936.

Elementary Economics

New York: MacMillan.

Fischer, Stanley. 1999. In "Samuelson's

Economics

at Fifty: Remarks on the Occasion of

the Anniversary of Publication."

Journal of Economic Education

(Fall).

Garver, Frederic B., and Alvin Hansen. 1938.

Principles of Economics

. Boston: Ginn.

Hansen, Alvin H. 1953.

A Guide to Keynes

. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Helpman, Elhanan. 1998. "Doing Research." In

Passion and Craft.

Michael Szenberg, ed.

Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

SAMUELSON'S

ECONOMICS

: THE CONTINUING LEGACY 103

Hicks, John R. 1937. "Mr. Keynes and the Classics: A Suggested Reinterpretation."

Econo-

metrica

5: 147–59.

Kiekhoffer, William H. 1936.

Economic Principles, Problems and Policies

. New York:

Appleton-Century.

Linder, Mark C., and Julius Sensat. 1977.

Anti-Samuelson

. 2 vols. New York: Urzen Books.

Mankiw, N. Gregory. 2004.

Principles of Economics

. 3rd ed. Mason, Ohio: South-Western

College Publishing.

McGraw, Harold A., Jr. 1999. Contribution to "Samuelson's

Economics

at Fifty: Remarks

on the Occasion of the Anniversary of Publication." See Samuelson (1999).

Price, B.B. 2002. "Samuelson the Vain." In

Paul Samuelson and the Foundations of Mod-

ern Economics

. K. Puttaswamaiah, ed. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers.

Rothbard, Murray N. 1997. "Review of

Economics

, by P. Samuelson."

The Wall Street

Review of Books

(December 1973): 518–22. Reprinted as "Paul Samuelson's

Econom-

ics

, Ninth Edition" in

The Logic of Action Two: Applications and Criticism from the

Austrian School

. Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar.

Samuelson, Paul A. 2004a. "Foreword." In

New Frontiers in Economics

. Michael Szenberg

and Lall Ramrattan, eds. New York: Cambridge University Press.

———. 2004b.

Economics

. 18th ed. New York: McGraw Hill.

———. 1999. Contribution to "Samuelson's

Economics

at Fifty: Remarks on the Occasion of

the Anniversary of Publication."

Journal of Economic Education

(Fall).

———. 1997. "Credo of a Lucky Textbook Author."

Journal of Economic Perspectives

11, no.

2 (Spring): 153–60.

———. 1947a. "

Foundations of Economic Analysis." Harvard Economic Studies

80.

———. 1947b.

The Collected Scientific Papers of Paul A. Samuelson

. 5 vols. Cambridge,

Mass.: MIT Press.

Samuelson, Paul A., and Nordhaus, William D. 1995.

Economics

. 15th ed. New York:

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Skousen, Mark. 1997a. "The Perseverance of Paul Samuelson's

Economics

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———. 1997b. "Welcome Back, Professor."

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Slichter, Sumner H. 1931.

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104 THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS VOL. 8, NO. 2 (SUMMER 2005)

... See, for instance, Skousen (1997), Nelson (2001), and Levy and Peart (2011). Other accounts, such as Samuelson (1997) and Gottesman, Ramrattan, and Szenberg (2005), offer apologetic perspectives on the textbook. Other uses of Economics, along with other textbooks, to trace the development of economics concepts can be found in Pearce and Hoover (1995), Medema (2014), andForder (2015). ...

Yann Giraud

Historians of economics rarely consider textbooks as more than passive receptacles of previously validated knowledge. Therefore, their active role in shaping the discipline and its image is seldom addressed. In this paper, I study the making of Paul Samuelson's successive editions of Economics from 1967 to 1973 as an instance of how textbooks stand at the crossroads between disciplinary knowledge, pedagogy, and larger political and societal concerns. In the mid-1960s , Economics , now at its sixth edition, was at the height of its success. Considered one cornerstone of modern economics, it was also at the center of a number of criticisms dealing with the current state of the economic discipline and its teaching in the universities. While the profession expressed its concern over the lack of relevance of economics to address the pressing issues of the day and pleaded for a new "problem-solving" approach to economic education, the late 1960s witnessed the emergence of a new generation of "radical" economists criticizing the economics orthodoxy. Their contention that mainstream theory had neglected the issues of class struggle and capitalist exploitation found a favorable echo among an increasingly politicized population. Using archival materials, I show how Samuelson, helped by his editorial team at McGraw-Hill, attempted to take into account these changes in order to ensure the continuing success of subsequent editions of his text in an increasingly competitive market. This study emphasizes Samuelson's ambiguous attitude toward his contenders, revealing, on the one hand, his apparent openness to discussion and outsiders' suggestions, and, on the other hand, his firm attachment to mildly liberal politics and aversion to Marxism, unchanged through revisions. It also helps refine a notion that is often invoked but never fully expounded in textbook studies: that of the audience.

... Of course, important economic knowledge can also be derived from leading textbooks, such as Samuelson's Economics in 1948, which is currently available in its 19th edition (Samuelson and Nordhaus 2010). It can still be considered the gold standard in teaching economics and has significantly influenced other textbooks in this field (Skousen 1997;Gottesman, Ramrattan, and Szenberg 2005;Green 2012). These textbooks affect pedagogical and epistemological processes, as they introduce students to the dominant orthodox narrative in economics, with the result that students 'retell the received "stories" of economics' (Richardson 2004, 518). ...

Niclas Modig

Based on Young's notion of powerful knowledge, acquiring disciplinary knowledge emerging from an economic epistemic community is expected to make an important difference for people when dealing with economic issues in their daily lives. In this regard, this article's author asked Swedish scholars of economics at higher education institutions what they considered to be the most important economic concepts that people would need to acquire and understand. The article provides knowledge about the case of Sweden as a contribution to existing research. Although the article does not suggest a list of key concepts, the results clearly bear close similarities to the economic concepts proposed within the framework of threshold concepts. These concepts is one important resource to be considered when deciding on what economic content students should have access to in school enabling them to face economic issues in their private and public lives.

... These courses are largely shaped by the course textbook, of which a handful-modelled on Samuelson's (1948) classic text-dominate the market (Gottesman et al., 2005;Skousen, 1997). These courses-and the textbooks-offer the received view of economics, and they are an "obligatory passage point" (Latour, 1987, p. 159) for the few that go on to become economists. ...

Tom L. Green

A high proportion of North American undergraduates take at least one mainstream principles of economics course; most such courses are shaped by the course textbook. Successive editions of textbooks can be investigated to better understand what their authors thought being conversant in a subject required and what economic views and theories have been disseminated over time. In this chapter, results are presented showing how the principles-level presentation of economic growth and its relationship to sustainability has evolved in mainstream textbooks over the 60-year interval between 1948 and 2008, subdivided into four distinct periods. The main object of analysis is Paul Samuelson's Economics; relevant changes in the treatment of growth and sustainability between editions are traced. The evolution of these topics in two other mainstream textbooks is also evaluated. 2 This review documents that Samuelson's first edition gave growth limited albeit sympathetic attention. As the succeeding editions rolled out, Samuelson and the other leading textbook authors advocated more emphatically for growth. Drawbacks of growth were sometimes acknowledged in brief passages that nevertheless reassured readers of growth's viability. The leading textbook authors quickly incorporated a discussion of the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth following its publication in 1972; their treatment was generally dismissive. This analysis further shows that the mainstream economics textbook discussion of biophysical limits has generally failed to improve in sophistication over time or to respond substantively to an accumulating literature questioning the feasibility and desirability of further growth.

Teaching economics in a new age of differentiation, diversification, and heterodoxies.

Economists occupy leading positions in many different sectors including central and private banks, multinational corporations, the state and the media, as well as serving as policy consultants on everything from health to the environment and security. Power and Influence of Economists explores the interconnected relationship between power, knowledge and influence which has led economics to be both a source and beneficiary of widespread power and influence. The contributors to this book explore the complex and diverse methods and channels that economists have used to exert and expand their influence from different disciplinary and national perspectives. Four different analytical views on the role of power and economics are taken: first, the role of economic expert discourses as power devices for the formation of influential expertise; second, the logics and modalities of governmentality that produce power/knowledge apparatuses between science and society; third, economists as involved in networks between academia, politics and the media; and forth, economics considered as a social field, including questions of legitimacy and unequal relations between economists based on the detention of various capitals. The volume includes case studies on a variety of national configurations of economics, such as the US, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Greece, Mexico and Brazil, as well as international spaces and organisations such as the IMF. This book provides innovative research perspectives for students and scholars of heterodox economics, cultural political economy, sociology of professions, network studies, and the social studies of power, discourse and knowledge.

Lukas Bäuerle

By conducting a discourse analysis (SKAD) in the field of academic economics textbooks, this chapter aims at reconstructing frames and identity options offered to undergraduate students relating to the questions 'Why study economics?' and 'Who do I become by studying economics?'. The analysis showed three major frames and respective identity offerings, all of which are contextualized theoretically. While a first frame promises students to learn 'eternal truths', thereby becoming 'specialized knowers', a second frame encourages students to capitalize their education as self-entrepreneurs. A third frame combines the 'Why?' of economic education directly with identity options by granting students insights in their 'real' and 'true' inner state. Taken together, economics textbooks appear as a "total structure of actions brought to bear upon possible action" (Foucault), therefore, as a genuine example of Foucauldian power structures.

Lukas Bäuerle

By conducting a discourse analysis (SKAD) in the field of academic economics textbooks, this paper aims at reconstructing frames and identity options offered to undergraduate students relating to the questions 'Why study economics?' and 'Who do I become by studying economics?'. The analysis showed three major frames and respective identity offerings, all of which are contextualized theoretically, with prominent reference to the Foucauldian reflection of the science of Political Economy. Surprisingly, none of them encourages the student to think critically, as could have been expected in a pedagogical context. Taken together, economics textbooks appear as a "total structure of actions brought to bear upon possible action" (Foucault), therefore, as a genuine example of Foucauldian power structures.

Philipp Korom

This paper examines the concept of textbook eminence and asks whether this specific form of scholarly recognition is of a temporal rather than enduring nature. Based on an analysis of 30 leading textbooks in economics, psychology and economics from the 1970s and 2010s, it is established that less than a third of all eminent scholars remain across the period as the most cited authors. Therefore, the average "half-life" of textbook eminence is shorter than half a century. Textbook eminence, it seems, is associated first and foremost with 'certified recognition,' expressed through encyclopedia entries dedicated to individual scholars. In psychology, and partly in sociology, citation impact turns out to be a further significant correlate. In economics, however, textbook eminence is completely detached from peer recognition, as measured by the h-index. The identified short "half-life" of textbook eminence does not necessarily imply a replacement of older elites by younger researchers. In sociology, very few 20th century newcomers have yet attained textbook eminence.

Kenneth G. Elzinga

In 1948, Americans in great numbers were reading Dwight D. Eisenhower's Crusade in Europe and Dale Carnegie's How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. Atop the best-seller list in fiction were two totally different reading experiences: The Big Fisherman by Lloyd Douglas and Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead. That year as well Kinsey's Sexual Behavior of the Human Male approached the top of the best-seller list. Also in 1948, unmentioned by Publishers Weekly, a textbook authored by a young economist at MIT was published at a suggested retail price of $4.50. The book, entitled Economics, came to outsell Eisenhower and Mailer on war, Carnegie on worrying, Douglas on the Apostle Peter, and even Kinsey on sex. The eleven principles of economics textbooks by Paul A. Samuelson encompass over three publishing decades, 9000 pages of printed text, and a combined weight of 35 pounds for a complete set.' The book has been translated into over 30 foreign languages. Samuelson's eleven principles are an imposing publishing accomplishment, all the more so against the backdrop of the author's other contributions to the discipline.2 It is as if someone won Wimbledon and also was the game's most popular sportswriter-and then kept on winning Wimbledon and writing about tennis for over forty years.

Paul A. Samuelson

Leading economists analyze the new directions that subdisciplines of economics have taken in the face of modern economic challenges. These essays represent invention and discovery in the areas of information, macroeconomics and public policies, international trade and development, finance, business, contracts, law, gaming, and government, as these areas of study evolve through the different phases of the scientific process. They offer a wealth of factual information on the current state of the economy. Theoretical and empirical innovations conceptualize reality and values in different ways from their predecessors. Together the essays offer the reader a balanced look at the various fields, approaches, and dimensions that comprise future directions in economic theory, research, and practice. The extensive introduction by the editors not only summarizes and reviews the implications of the contributions presented in the volume, but also examines how scientific progress takes place, with special reference to economics and finance.

Source: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225403280_Samuelson's_economics_The_continuing_legacy

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