In this thoroughly updated second edition of Free Market Economics, Steven Kates assesses economic principles based on classical economic theory before Keynesian theory became dominant in macroeconomics and equilibrium analysis became standard in microeconomics. He looks at economics from the perspective of an entrepreneur making decisions in a world where the future is unknown, innovation is a continuous process and the future is being created before it can be understood.

Key Features include:

• Analysis derived from the theories of pre-Keynesian classical economists, as this is the only source available today that explains the classical pre-Keynesian theory of the business cycle.


• A focus on the entrepreneur as the driving force in economic activity rather than on anonymous “forces” as found in most economic theory today.


• Great emphasis is placed on the consequences of decision making under uncertainty.


• Offers an introductory understanding, accessible to the non-specialist reader.

The aim of this book is to redirect the attention of economists and policy makers towards the economic theories that prevailed in earlier times. Their problems were little different from ours but their way of understanding the operation of an economy and dealing with those problems was completely different. Free Market Economics, Second Edition will help students and general readers understand the economics of that earlier time, written by someone who believes that this now-discarded approach to economic thought was superior to what is found in most of our textbooks today.

Published by Edward Elgar Publishing, in association with the IEA, 2014

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