Bateman, V. N.

Classical liberalism: the foundation for a new economics?

Critical Review

Vol. 28(3-4) pp. 440-460 (2016)

Abstract: In Robust Political Economy, Mark Pennington argues for a minimal state founded not on neoclassical economic principles but on a return to classical liberalism. Pennington makes his case on the basis of Hayek’s “knowledge” problem and public-choice theory’s “incentive” problem. While this is a welcome start, classical liberalism is a promising agenda for a new economics, and for the “reform of capitalism,” only if it is accompanied by an explicit rejection of Milton Friedman’s subordination of normative to positive economics, and by a move beyond the traditional division of the economy into twin spheres (the state and the market) to embrace a third element: the domestic sphere.

Author links: Victoria Bateman  

Publisher's Link: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08913811.2016.1264157