An Introduction to Great Economists — Adam Smith, the Physiocrats & More — Presented in New MOOC

Last fall, Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabar­rok, two econ pro­fes­sors from George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty, launched MRUni­ver­si­ty, a MOOC plat­form that brings eco­nom­ics cours­es to the larg­er world. (If Tyler Cowen’s name sounds famil­iar, it’s prob­a­bly because you’re already famil­iar with his blog Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion or his “Eco­nom­ic Scene” col­umn for the New York Times.) Fast for­ward to this spring, and MRUni­ver­si­ty now offers cours­es on The Euro­zone Cri­sis, Mex­i­co’s Econ­o­my, The Amer­i­can Hous­ing Finance Sys­tem, and, as of this month, The Great Econ­o­mists. The short course descrip­tion for Great Econ­o­mists: Clas­si­cal Eco­nom­ics and its Fore­run­ners reads:

Who were the first eco­nom­ic thinkers? What are the very ori­gins of eco­nom­ic thought? What did ear­li­er econ­o­mists under­stand but has been lost to the mod­ern world? Why is Adam Smith the great­est econ­o­mist of all time? How did the eco­nom­ic issues of the 18th and 19th cen­turies shape the thoughts of the clas­si­cal econ­o­mists? This class, which cov­ers the his­to­ry of eco­nom­ic thought up until the “Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion” in the 1870s, will answer all of these ques­tions and many oth­ers.

The course starts with Galileo and the the­o­ry of val­ue; touch­es on Mon­tesquieu and Man­dev­ille; offers to an intro­duc­tion to Mer­can­til­ism and the Phys­iocrats, and then real­ly comes to focus on David Hume and most­ly Adam Smith and his clas­sic trea­tise, The Wealth of Nations (find it in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks), before turn­ing to lat­er thinkers and peri­ods.

You can sign up for The Great Econ­o­mists here. And it will be added to our list of 300 MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion Uni­ver­si­ty Launch­es, Bring­ing Free Cours­es in Eco­nom­ics to the Web

60-Sec­ond Adven­tures in Eco­nom­ics: An Ani­mat­ed Intro to The Invis­i­ble Hand and Oth­er Eco­nom­ic Ideas

Read­ing Marx’s Cap­i­tal with David Har­vey (Free Course)


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