Interpreting Macroeconomics

Roger E. Backhouse is Reader in the History of Economic Thought at the University of Birmingham. He is the author of A History of Modern Economic Analysis (1985), Economists and the Economy (1994) and two macroeconomics textbooks. He is also a co-editor of Economics and Language (1993) and the editor of New Directions in Economic Methodology (1994).

• Chapter 1 Methodology, rhetoric and the history of macroeconomic thought; Part 1 Historiography; Chapter 2 Relativism in the history of economic thought; Chapter 3 Fact, fiction or moral tale? How should we approach the history of economic thought?; Chapter 4 History’s many dimensions; Part 2 Macroeconomics before Keynes; Chapter 5 J.A.Hobson as a macroeconomic theorist; Chapter 6 F.A.Walker’s theory of ‘hard times’; Chapter 7 Keynes, American institutionalism and uncertainty; Part 3 Methodology and macroeconomics; Chapter 8 Macroeconomics Since Keynes: Two Interpretations; Chapter 9 A methodological appraisal of Keynesian economics; Chapter 10 The neo-Walrasian research programme in macroeconomics; Part 4 Rhetoric and macroeconomics; Chapter 11 Rhetoric and implicit methodology in Friedman’s macroeconomics; Chapter 12 Rhetoric and persuasion in macroeconomics: a comparison of Muth and Leijonhufvud;