Robert Heilbroner Econ 490 Fall 2019



Robert Louis Heilbroner


He was born in 1919 and he claims that his liberal economic views were based on what he had learned from his families chauffeur who was like a father to him. He served in WWII and got his doctorate from the New School for Social Research in New York City after the war.  He achieved his fame after writing his first book called The Worldly Philosophers, which was publicized in 1953. Afterwards he wrote many other titles which included, The Quest for Wealth, The Future as History and The Making of Economic Society, and many more books.

According to the New York Times he was regarded by mainstream economists as a popularizer who made no real contributions to the field of economics while he thought that those economists were to reliant on their mathematics and modeling which made them forget what the purpose of economics was -- to help improve the wellbeing of society.


Comments

  1. Professor ArvanSeptember 17, 2019 at 4:11 AM

    I read the Worldly Philosophers as an undergraduate and then re-read it only a few years ago. It is very interesting to trace the economic ideas back to their origins.

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