Measurement and meaning in economics : the essential Deirdre McCloskey / edited and introduced by Stephen Thomas Ziliak.

Includes list of D.N. McCloskey's works.

Includes index.

Did Victorian Britain fail? -- English open fields as behavior towards risk -- How the gold standard worked, 1880-1913 -- Corn at interest : the extent and cost of grain storage in medieval England --; 1780-1860 : a survey --; Bourgeois virtue and the history of P and S --; Why I am no longer a positivist --; The rhetoric of economics --; Storytelling in economics --; How to do a rhetorical analysis of economics, and why --; History, differential equations, and the problem of narration --; The rhetoric of scientism : how John Muth persuades --; The lawyerly rhetoric of Coases's "The nature of the firm" --; Some consequences of a conjective economics --; Economic science : a search through the hyperspace of assumptions --;The standard error of regressions.

This essential book collects together, for the first time, the writings of Deirdre McCloskey on economic history and the rhetoric of economics. The essays have been presented to show McCloskey's evolution over time: from economist to critic, positivist to postmodernist, conventional economist to feminist economist, man to woman. Measurement and Meaning in Economics allows the reader to experience an astonishing personal and intellectual journey with one of today's most fascinating economists. McCloskey argues that economics has become ahistorical and narrowly scientific, which is a harmful development for a moral science. In all of the papers presented in this volume she writes with historical consciousness and critical understanding, in an attempt to repair the dysfunctional relationship between economics and the humanities.