Age of Fragmentation

Alessandro Roncaglia is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the Sapienza University of Rome, member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (since 2018 in its Presidency Council) and former President of the Italian Economists Society. His book The Wealth of Ideas (Cambridge, 2005) received the Blanqui Prize of the European Society for the History of Economic Thought. He also won the Guggenheim Prize in the History of Economic Thought for 2019.

• 1. Introduction. A non-linear discourse; Part I. The Background: 2. The foundations: classicals and marginalists; 3. The immediate precursors; Part II. The Giants of the Short Century: 4. The founder of neo-liberalism: Friedrick von Hayek; 5. The revolutionary: Piero Sraffa; Part III. The Fragmentation of the Mainstream: 6. The new microeconomics: general equilibrium and expected utilities, theory of industrial organization; 7. The macroeconomics of the neoclassical synthesis; 8. The myth of the invisible hand: neo-liberal streams; 9. Applied economics and econometrics; Part IV. The Weakening of the Paradigm: 10. Behavioural economics and bounded rationality; 11. From efficient financial markets to the theory of crises; Part V. Is a New Paradigm Possible?: 12. Post-Keynesian macroeconomics; 13. Marxism, evolutionism, institutionalism; 14. Ethics and the problem of power.

'Professor Roncaglia is one of the world's leading authorities on the history of economic thought. He has written intellectual biographies of William Petty and Piero Sraffa, and a recent magnus opus – The Wealth of Ideas: A History of Economic Thought. This new book is a worthy sequel, with extended detail on more recent developments in the history of economic thought, and beautifully written. The book should be essential reading for any serious economist who wants to master the origins and historical progress of their discipline.' A. P. Thirlwall, University of Kent