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The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics

The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics rather than just read about it. In short: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics (2018), 3rd ed., is a twenty-volume reference work on economics published by Palgrave Macmillan. It contains around 3,000 entries, including many classic essays from the original Inglis Palgrave Dictionary, and a significant increase in new entries from the previous editions by the most prominent economists in the field, among them 36 winners of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in…

Key takeaways

The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics (2018), 3rd ed., is a twenty-volume reference work on economics published by Palgrave Macmillan. It contains around 3,000 entries, including many classic essays from the original Inglis Palgrave Dictionary, and a significant increase in new entries from the previous editions by the most prominent economists in the field, among them 36 winners of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Articles are classified according to Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) classification codes. The New Palgrave is also available in a hyperlinked online version. Online content is added to the 2018 edition, and a 4th edition under the editorship of Jayati Ghosh, Esteban Pérez Caldentey, and Matías Vernengo will be published in 2027. J. Barkley Rosser Jr. was a co-editor until his untimely demise. The 1st edition was titled The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics (1987), was and edited by John Eatwell, Murray Milgate, and Peter Newman, as a way of recovering the legacy of Inglis Palgrave famous dictionary. It was published in four volumes, while the 2nd edition was under the direction of Steven N. Durlauf and Lawrence E. Blume and was published in eight volumes. Both are discussed in a section below. Access to full-text articles (for all editions and post-2018 updates) are available online by subscription, whether of an organization, a person, or a person through an organization.

The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics (1987) is the title of the first New Palgrave edition. It is a four-volume reference edited by John Eatwell, Murray Milgate, and Peter Newman. It has 4,000 pages of entries, including 1,300 subject entries (with 4,000 cross-references), and 655 biographies. There were 927 contributors, including 13 Nobel Laureates in Economics at the time of first publication. It includes about 50 articles from Palgrave's Dictionary of Political Economy (1925–1927). It was roughly twice the length of its predecessor and differed further in excluding most subjects not on economics or closely related to its practice. It was developed as a modern version of the old Inglis Palgrave dictionary, with entries written by prominent economists for a highly specialized public.

Reviews

General remarks Reviewing the 1987 edition for the New York Times, Robert M. Solow concluded that "this is a dictionary only in a very special sense. There are excellent survey articles, in various sizes, on various subjects. But the best of them are written by professionals for professionals." According to Solow, graduate students in economics would find the dictionary useful, but most of the articles would be inaccessible to non-economists, even undergraduate students of the liberal arts. For economists, however, the dictionary provided many excellent overviews of contemporary research. In response, editor Milgate (1992) confirmed that the articles were written for an audience of professional economists, and so neither for the general reading public nor for specialist economists.

Mathematics and contemporary economics According to Milgate, New Palgrave downplayed mathematics, in comparison to leading economic journals. Only 24% of the columns contained "any mathematics" (and so required expensive hand-typesetting), while only 25% of the most recent issue of the American Economic Review (AER) in fact lacked mathematics, according to Milgate, who averred that the AER's mathematical usage was typical of leading contemporary journals: The New Palgrave's usage of mathematics was the reciprocal of the contemporary profession's. (Milgate 1992, p. 299) "It must be concluded that the New Palgrave actually under-represented the mathematical element in modern economics; and under-represented it to a significant degree", wrote Milgate (1992, p. 300). Commenting on contemporary economics, Solow described technical economics as its essential "infrastructure":

There is a lesson in the fate of Palgrave. Economics is no longer a fit conversation piece for ladies and gentlemen. It has become a technical subject. Like any technical subject it attracts some people who are more interested in the technique than the subject. That is too bad, but it may be inevitable. In any case, do not kid yourself: the technical core of economics is indispensable infrastructure for the political economy. That is why, if you consult Palgrave looking for enlightenment about the world today, you will be led to technical economics, or history, or nothing at all. More advanced mathematics was implicit in some of the articles, many of which were well written and reasonably accessible. Solow recommended the "broad and deep" article on game theory by Robert J. Aumann for well-equipped graduate students, along with John Harsanyi's article on bargaining theory. The articles on financial economics were "written by the best people—Stephen Ross, Robert Merton, and others—and they show it"; however, they were too difficult for the average investor. Complimenting the article on international trade, Solow added a caveat lector: "But God forbid that" a reader without knowledge of economics should try to understand protectionism, by consulting the New Palgrave. In his review, George Stigler commended the dictionary's non-technical and conceptually rich article on social choice, which was written by Kenneth Arrow, among "numerous" excellent articles. However, Stigler criticized the inclusion of "dozens" of articles in mathematical economics, which failed to provide intuitive introductions to the problem, how it was solved, and what the solution is: "These articles were written, not for a tolerably competent economist, but exclusively for fellow specialists."

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Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics

In research: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1987 in economic history, 1987 non-fiction books, 2008 non-fiction books, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics in 20 minutes

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Frequently asked questions

What is The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics in simple terms?

Why does The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics.