EXAMINATION PAPER

Examination Session: Year: Exam Code:

May/June 2014
2 3 3 0 5 1 / 0 1

Title:

HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT

Time Allowed: 1 hour 30 minutes

Examination Material Provided: None

Additional Materials Permitted: None

Instructions: Answer TWO questions

ERASMUS AND EXCHANGE STUDENTS: Answer ONE

question.

Erasmus and Exchange students may use a dictionary

Each question carries equal weight. Where a question is

sub-divided each sub-partcarries equal weight unless
otherwise stated.

Revision:

ED01/2014
University of Durham Copyright
 Exam code

233051/01

1. Critically evaluate the claim that, although Smith was an inconsistent theorist,
“he made considerable progress in the explanation of value. And, in the end,
his theory rests on the labour theory of value.” (Roll, 1961).

2. Appraise critically the claim that Ricardo was not successful in his attempt to
isolate the relation between wages and profit by eliminating rent on the grounds
that it was a surplus due to differential fertility, and thus it would be zero on the
least fertile land.

3. In the Preface to the 1803 second edition of his essay on population, Malthus
admitted he had introduced “another check to population, which does not
strictly come under the head of either vice or misery”. Critically evaluate
whether this new check invalidates the conclusions of the first (1798) edition.

4. If Mill (1869) himself argued that Thornton’s attack on supply and demand
theory had not “shown it to be in the smallest degree incorrect”, why then did
he recant?

5. Given that Marx thought profit was unpaid labour or surplus value, the
existence of which distorted prices from values, what truth is there in
Blaug’s(1996) claim that “prices in Marx are determined in the same way as in
orthodox theory, that is, by long-run costs of production, including profit at the
ruling rate”?

6. Critically evaluate the argument that the theory of exchange in Jevons’ Theory
of Political Economy is much more complete than anything he provided on
production and distribution.

7. Critically appraise the claim that the notion of the ‘mythical auctioneer’ and the
process of tatonnement weaken the logic of Walras’ economics.

8. By 1937 Meade, Hicks, Harrod and others had attempted to express Keynes’
General Theory in mathematical form. To what extent did they succeed in
identifying the major aspects of the work?

9. To what extent is Kuhn’s idea of radical paradigm shifts useful for thinking
about the development of economic thought?

ED01/2014 END
University of Durham Copyright