Japan and the Study of the History of Economic Thought

This volume marks the first English translation of Toshihiro Tanaka’s research outside Japan, offering a rare opportunity for international scholars to explore the relationship between Western economic thought and Japan.

Rigorous in its analysis and broad in scope, the volume is structured in five parts that cut a path through classical economics and the Scottish Enlightenment, through to the lectures of modern and neoclassical economics, before concluding with studies in the influence of American and Australian economics in Japan. Studies incorporate work from philosophers such as Bernard Mandeville, Irving Fisher, Thorstein Veblen and Joseph Dorfman, but also pay due attention to work from the Society for the History of Economic Thought of Japan since 1981. Concerned with the methodology of writing a history of economics, the latter parts of the volume are composed from selected materials, including a previously unpublished letter from David Hume to Adam Smith, book reviews, and a word of remembrance for the late Professor Peter Groenewegen.

Japan and the Study of the History of Economic Thought will appeal to students and scholars of philosophy, economics and Japanese studies more broadly.