Based on the six topics of rationality, confidence, money, regulation, business and globalisation, these imaginary radio programmes provide a pretext for discovering 18 renowned economists who have greatly influenced the currents of economic thinking.
Choose your programme :
They are quoted in the programme, learn more about them :
© Collection BSI/CSI Adam Smith
The Scottish philosopher and economist Adam Smith was born in 1723 in Kircalky (Scotland) and died in 1790 in Edinburgh. He is widely viewed as the father of political economics
At the age of 27, Smith was appointed to the Chair of Logic at the University of Glasgow and subsequently that of Moral Philosophy. In 1765, he spent a brief spell in France where he frequented economists such as Quesnay and Turgot. His principal work, "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" was published in London in 1776.
Smith demonstrated that the wealth of nations is born of the division of labour. A free trade thinker, he formulated the so-called "absolute advantage" law according to which all countries have an interest in specialising in productions which they achieve at the least cost and described the famous mechanism of the "invisible hand" which, in his view caused individual acts and the general interest to converge in a market economy.
© International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, Netherlands/Licence Creative Commons Karl Marx
The historian, philosopher, sociologist, economist, revolutionary socialist and political theorist Karl Marx was born in 1818 in Trèves Germany and died in London in 1883.
After studying law, history and philosophy, he became editor of a radical newspaper opposing the Catholic clergy in Cologne. To escape censorship, Marx moved to Paris where he became engaged in political activity alongside Engels. He published numerous articles and books advocating the end of the state and money while promoting the struggle of the classes. His positions forced him into exile several times through to his period in London where he wrote his major opus "Das capital".
In this book, Marx pursued and developed his criticism of the capitalist method of production/consumption which gave rise to exploitation between the dominant class (the bourgeoisie) and the labouring class (the workers).
© Columbia University, USA/Licence Creative Commons Ronald Coase
Born in 1910 in Willesden (United Kingdom), Ronald Coase is a British economist of the new institutional economics perspective, a current of thinking which analyses the role of institutions.
After management studies at the London School of Economics, he studied industrial organisation in the United States then returned to the UK to take up a teaching career before emigrating to the United States where he became professor at the University of Buffalo then the University of Virginia followed by the University of Chicago. Editor-in-chief of the "Journal of Law and Economics", he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1991 for his work on the influence of transaction costs and property rights.
By demonstrating that all transactions have a cost for a business, he affirmed that if costs are zero and property rights are properly defined, the free play of negotiation makes it possible to achieve effective allocation of resources without state intervention.
© Licence Creative Commons Oliver Eaton Williamson
Born in 1932 in Superior (Wisconsin, United States), the American economist Oliver E. Williamson was one of the principal initiators of new institutional economics.
After studying business administration at the University of Stanford, then working on a doctorate in economics at the University of Carnegie-Mellon, he was named emeritus professor in economic affairs and law at the University of California (Berkeley). In 2009, jointly with Elinor Ostrom, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on economic governance, in other words, how to organise and regulate exchange and production.
He developed the work of Ronald Coase on the concept of transaction costs (costs engendered by bargaining and disagreements between partners) and presented enterprise as an alternative solution to the market when competition is limited.
© The Granger Collection NYC/Rue-des-Archives Joseph Aloïs Schumpeter
The Austrian economist Joseph A. Schumpeter was born in 1883 in Triesch-Taconic, Moravia and died in 1950 in Salisbury, Connecticut (United States).
After studying law and economics in Vienna, he firstly worked as a lawyer before teaching political economics at the University of Czernowitz (Ukraine). In 1911, he published his "Theory of economic development" which added to his growing reputation. Austrian finance minister in 1919, before taking the helm of a private bank which went bust in 1924, he emigrated to the United States where he taught economics at the University of Harvard until his death.
A theoretician of economic cycles (where periods of growth follow periods of crisis), Joseph Schumpeter highlighted the role of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs in the development of innovation which is central to economic development.