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The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy

Online ISBN:
9780191577437
Print ISBN:
9780199548477
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy

Donald A. Wittman (ed.),
Donald A. Wittman
(ed.)
Economics, University of California, Santa Cruz
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Donald A. Wittman is Professor of Economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Barry R. Weingast (ed.)
Barry R. Weingast
(ed.)
Political Science, Stanford University
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Barry R. Weingast: Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution; and Ward C. Krebs Family Professor, Department of Political Science, at Stanford University.

Published online:
2 September 2009
Published in print:
19 June 2008
Online ISBN:
9780191577437
Print ISBN:
9780199548477
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy surveys the field of political economy. Over its long lifetime, political economy has had many different meanings: the science of managing the resources of a nation so as to provide wealth to its inhabitants for Adam Smith; the study of how the ownership of the means of production influenced historical processes for Marx; the study of the inter-relationship between economics and politics for some twentieth-century commentators; and for others, a methodology emphasizing individual rationality (the economic or public choice approach) or institutional adaptation (the sociological version). This Handbook views political economy as a grand (if imperfect) synthesis of these various strands, treating political economy as the methodology of economics applied to the analysis of political behaviour and institutions. The fifty-eight articles range from micro to macro, national to international, institutional to behavioural, methodological to substantive. Articles on social choice, constitutional theory, and public economics are set alongside ones on voters, parties and pressure groups, macroeconomics and politics, capitalism and democracy, and international political economy and international conflict.

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