&Psi. SMITH, MARSHALL, AND SCHUMPETER. We had a very good class yesterday, turning from mathematical methods to intellectual history and mixing the two nicely. If you like economics, and have Powerpoint, you might like my overheads quoting these three economists. There's lots of research to be done based on single sentences in these writers. I found one quote in Marshall interesting in light of the current Enron conviction, the exception that proves the rule:

It is a strong proof of the marvellous growth in recent times of a spirit of honesty and uprightness in commercial matters, that the leading officers of great public companies yield as little as they do to the vast temptations to fraud which lie in their way.
...
If they showed an eagerness to avail themselves of opportunities for wrong- doing at all approaching that of which we read in the commercial history of earlier civilization, their wrong uses of the trusts imposed in them would have been on so great a scale as to prevent the development of this democratic form of business.

This is from Chapter 12 of Book IV of the Principles of Economics.

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