Enterprise & Trade in Victorian Britain: Essays in Historical Economics (Modern Revivals in Economic History Series)

In this collection of 10 essays, Donald McCloskey refutes the widespread notion that Britain's present economic difficulties date from the failure of Victorian businessmen. As one of the pioneers of the "cliometric" movement, he uses economics to analyse the British economy's effectiveness in the last century and argues lucidly that economic rationality is not a product of recent times. He also dispels the twin myths that there was never enough information to apply modern economic analysis to the past or that economics itself can survive without historical perspective. Enterprise and Trade in Victorian Britain is a major work of historical economics and should be valuable reading for students of the "cliometric" economic history of Britain, microeconomics and international trade, and historical method.