Before Method and Models - The Political Economy of Malthus and Ricardo

Before Method and Models examines the shocked reaction to their first appearance of economists in nineteenth-century Britain, where the presumption of Thomas Robert Malthus and David Ricardo to reform society on the basis of theory was unwelcome. Walter shows how the major challenge facing the first economists was, accordingly, to legitimize the activity of theorizing and then reforming economic life, along with the institutions that embedded it in the political nation.