I liked much of Lynne Kiesling's excellent list. Some possible additions:

TR Malthus "Essay on the Principle of Population, chapters 1 & 2.
Marx and Engels, "Communist Manifesto"
Engels, "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific"
Marshall, Principles, Book I, chapters 1, 4
Keynes, General Theory, chapter 12
Milton Friedman, "The Methodology of Positive Economics"
There should also be something by Veblen but I never know what to pick!

And for secondary literature:
Jacob Viner, "Adam Smith and Laissez-Faire" 1927
George Stigler, "David Ricardo and the 93% Labor Theory of Value" AER 1958
Phil Mirowski, "Physics and the 'Marginalist Revolution'" Cambridge Journal of Economics, 1984.

Bruce C.

On 12/17/2012 11:21 AM, Colander, David C. wrote:

A couple of years ago, I organized a creativity workshop for a group of graduate students, and had some excellent discussions with them. I covered history of thought; Ed Leamer covered creativity in econometrics, and Herb Gintis covered creativity in theory.  Avinash Dixit and John Siegfried covered general creativity issues.  It was a useful workshop, and the students recognized that they were not getting any useful instruction in the history of thought.  They asked me to suggest a  general reading list that all economics students should have  read, which I didn't have right off the bat, but I thought would be useful.    So now, with your help,  I will try to develop one.

So my question is:   If one had to list, say, 20   articles  or chapters in books that all economists should definitely have read, what would be on that list?     My plan is to post this list on my website and to possiblly  take out an ad in the 2014 Program guide providing my suggestions for  the top 10 to graduate students, and picking on the professioin for not doing its job in training graduate students to have perspective on issues that a study of past literature provides. So my question: What suggestions would people have for me of "must reads"?

Thanks,


Dave

--
Bruce Caldwell
Research Professor of Economics
Director, Center for the History of Political Economy

"To discover a reference has often taken hours of labour, to fail to discover one has often taken days." Edwin Cannan, on editing  Smith's Wealth of Nations

Address:
Department of Economics
Duke University
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