The Revival of Classical Political Economy (Routledge Studies in the History of Economics)

Recent years have seen renewed interest in classical political economy.The essays in this collection, presented in honour of Christian Gehrke, explore the central tenets of classical political economy, its comeback in the aftermath of Sraffa’s works and the engagement of major economists. The chapters in the opening section present a gradual elaboration of what became known as the “classical” approach to political economy, with the theory of value and distribution as its core piece.It concerns what Sraffa called the “standpoint” of the classical economist, which revolves around the concept of “social surplus”, its distribution mainly as property incomes, and how “physical real costs” together with income distribution governs relative prices in conditions of free competition.The classical authors dealt with include François Quesnay, Richard Cantillon, David Hume, Adam Smith and especially David Ricardo.The second section explores the resurgence of classical political economy.Major eleme