Curriculum Great Economists & Their Big Ideas
Great Economists & Their Big Ideas
The lives and landmark ideas of thinkers from Kautilya and Ibn Khaldun to Ricardo, Marshall, Ostrom, Kahneman and Ambedkar - and why their ideas still matter.
- Kautilya's Arthashastra: Ancient Indian Economics The ancient Indian treatise on statecraft and economics, its ideas on taxation, trade and administration, and why it is still studied today. 📄 Read-aloud
- Ibn Khaldun: Taxes, Cities and the Rise and Fall of States The fourteenth-century North African scholar whose ideas on labour, taxation and the cycles of dynasties anticipated later economics. 📄 Read-aloud
- David Ricardo: Comparative Advantage and Rent The stockbroker-turned-economist who explained why countries gain from trade even when one is better at everything, and developed the theory of rent. 📄 Read-aloud
- Thomas Malthus: Population and Scarcity Malthus's warning that population growth would outrun food supply, why it seemed to fit history, and why it failed to predict the modern world. 📄 Read-aloud
- John Stuart Mill: Liberty, Utility and Reform The nineteenth-century philosopher-economist who wrote the leading economics textbook of his age, defended individual liberty and argued for women's equality. 📄 Read-aloud
- Alfred Marshall: Supply, Demand and the Margin The Cambridge economist whose 1890 textbook introduced the supply and demand diagram, elasticity and much of the toolkit still used today. 📄 Read-aloud
- Great Economists: Checkpoint 1 Quick checkpoint - five questions on Kautilya, Ibn Khaldun, Ricardo, Malthus, Mill and Marshall. 5 questions
- Thorstein Veblen: Conspicuous Consumption The American economist who argued that people often buy things to show off status, and whose ideas explain why some goods sell more when prices rise. 📄 Read-aloud
- Joan Robinson: Imperfect Competition and Beyond The Cambridge economist who showed how real markets differ from perfect competition, named monopsony, and challenged economic orthodoxy throughout her career. 📄 Read-aloud
- Elinor Ostrom: Governing the Commons The first woman to win the Nobel prize in economics, who showed that communities can manage shared resources without either privatisation or government control. 📄 Read-aloud
- Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky: Thinking About Thinking How two psychologists transformed economics by showing systematic patterns in how people misjudge risk and value, including prospect theory. 📄 Read-aloud
- W. Arthur Lewis: Development and the Dual Economy The Caribbean-born economist who explained how poor economies grow by moving workers from farming into modern industry, and the first Black Nobel laureate in economics. 📄 Read-aloud
- B. R. Ambedkar: The Economist Behind the Constitution The often overlooked economic work of B. R. Ambedkar, from his studies of public finance and the rupee to his ideas on land, labour and caste. 📄 Read-aloud
- Irving Fisher: Interest, Money and Debt Deflation How the American economist Irving Fisher explained real interest rates, the link between money and prices, and why falling prices can deepen a depression. 📄 Read-aloud
- Friedrich List: Protecting Infant Industries How the 19th-century German economist Friedrich List argued that developing countries need to protect new industries before embracing free trade, and why his ideas still matter. 📄 Read-aloud