Review of Marcel Boumans and Matthias Klaes (eds) (2013). Mark Blaug: Rebel with Many Causes. Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar

Abstract

Mark Blaug passed away on November 18, 2011. To honor his memory, two events were held in March 2012: a Memorial Conference at the Erasmus Institute for Philosophy and Economics, Rotterdam (NL), and a seminar hosted by the Scottish Centre for Economic Methodology at the University of Glasgow (UK). As Marcel Boumans and Matthias Klaes point out in their editorial Introduction, this book contains a collection of papers given at these two events and includes some additional papers submitted by people who were not able to attend the meetings “at such short notice” (p. 5). In addition, the book carries a Foreword by Alan Peacock and consists of two parts: part I has four chapters—written by John Maloney, Ruth Towse, Bruce Caldwell, and Thomas Mayer—that are devoted to personal appreciations and memoirs of Blaug; part II has twelve chapters—written by Richard G. Lipsey, David Laidler, Geoffrey M. Hodgson, Jack Vromen, Harro Maas, Roger E. Backhouse, John B. Davis, Marcel Baumans, Andrea Salanti, Victor Ginsburgh, Christian Handke and Erwin Dekker, and D. Wade Hands—that discuss some of Blaug’s favorite topics and put forward critical assessments of his specific contributions to the issues at hand. An extensive bibliography of Blaug’s publications and on-line sources ranging through twenty-nine pages rounds off the book.