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Graeme Donald Snooks, Economics without Time.- A Science Blind to the Forces of Historical Change (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1993, 327 pp., $39.50). Reviewed by
Christopher J. Napier London School of Economics
This book contains both a critique and a demonstration. The critique is aimed at what Snooks identifies as the absence of realism in modern deductive economics, manifested particularly by a downgrading of any historical perspective. To Snooks, modern economic theory ignores the dimension of time, so that even attempts to represent an economy dynamically often manifest themselves as a series of static equilibria with little attempt to explain how the economy moves from one equilibrium to the next. The demonstration of the relevance of a historical perspective draws on past research by Snooks into the medieval English economy, particularly as revealed by Domesday Book. Snooks argues that European economies during the last millennium have been subject to great waves of economic change lasting between 150 and 300 years. By demonstrating these waves, Snooks attempts to...