The Pillars of Economic Understanding

Continuing in this book his major examination of the authority systems of economics, Mark Perlman, with his co-author Charles R. McCann, Jr., structures his approach to the history of economic thought and the influences upon it around the four factors of production, together with the institutional role of the market. This unique approach sheds new and stimulating light on the complex history of economics. The authors' intent is to explain the shifts in the discip-line's general purpose as well as in the methods and analytical tools it has fashioned to the task of factor market analysis. An additional ambition of the book is to remind contemporary economists of how their current ideas link them to the progenitors of those ideas, the giants and geniuses of the past. This major contribution to the history of economic thought will be of interest to all who study the role of economics and the social sciences in the larger sweep of intellectual history. Mark Perlman is Professor of Economics, Emeritus, University of Pittsburgh. Charles R. McCann, Jr., is an independent scholar.