Atlas Trail
From Mercantilism to Behavioral Economics: Ten Schools of Thought
Ten schools in chronological order, 1500 to 1979, each paired with the economist whose own work carries it: bullion and trade balances, land as the sole wealth, the invisible hand, class conflict, the impossibility of planned calculation, conspicuous consumption, price theory's Chicago home, aggregate demand, the money supply, and the limits of human rationality.
Stop 1 of 20.
Schools of Thought
1500 to 1776: nations should accumulate bullion and run trade surpluses.
Stop 2 of 20.
Schools of Thought
1758: the first school to claim wealth has one true source, agricultural land.
Stop 3 of 20.
Economists
Its founder, whose Tableau Economique modeled the economy as a circular flow.
Stop 4 of 20.
Schools of Thought
1776: Adam Smith's invisible hand answers Mercantilism and Physiocracy alike.
Stop 5 of 20.
Economists
Founded Classical Economics with The Wealth of Nations.
Stop 6 of 20.
Schools of Thought
1867: a critique of Classical Economics' own account of capital and labor.
Stop 7 of 20.
Economists
Its founder, whose Capital reframed the classical categories as class conflict.
Stop 8 of 20.
Schools of Thought
1871: holds that central planning cannot rationally calculate prices at all.
Stop 9 of 20.
Economists
Founded the Austrian School on subjective value theory.
Stop 10 of 20.
Economists
Made the calculation-impossibility argument Oskar Lange's market socialism was built to rebut.
Stop 11 of 20.
Schools of Thought
1899: institutions and habits, not abstract rational actors, drive economic behavior.
Stop 12 of 20.
Economists
Its founder, who named "conspicuous consumption" in The Theory of the Leisure Class.
Stop 13 of 20.
Schools of Thought
1927: price theory and free markets, from a single university department.
Stop 14 of 20.
Economists
Risk, Uncertainty and Profit helped found the Chicago School's own account of profit.
Stop 15 of 20.
Schools of Thought
1936: aggregate demand, not self-correcting markets, explains depressions.
Stop 16 of 20.
Economists
Founded Keynesian Economics in the shadow of the Great Depression.
Stop 17 of 20.
Schools of Thought
1956: the money supply, not fiscal policy, is the primary lever of the business cycle.
Stop 18 of 20.
Economists
Led the Monetarist challenge to Keynesian orthodoxy.
Stop 19 of 20.
Schools of Thought
1979: real human decisions depart systematically from rational-actor models.
Stop 20 of 20.
Economists
Prospect Theory (1979) helped found Behavioral Economics.
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