Biographical Dictionary of American Economists

The Dictionary covers American and Canadian economists and writers/thinkers with views on economics from the pre-Revolutionary period to the 1950s. All the major schools of American economic thought are represented, ranging from the Constitutional school to the Keynesian and the Chicago School. A significant number of the subjects are female, including figures such as Anna Schwartz, Mabel Timlin, Mabel Newcomer, Margaret Gilpin Reid, Rose Friedman and Elizabeth Boody Schumpeter, highlighting the role that women have played in the development of American economic thought. More generally, the dictionary includes many minor but important figures who have contributed to that development, ranging from William Penn and Cotton Mather to Augustus M. Kelley and Leon Marshall. Individually, the entries capture important and often overlooked contributions to the development of economic thought in America; collectively, they encapsulate the rich diversity of that thought and the influences that have been at play on American economic thinking over four centuries.