Karl Marx
Karl Marx, the most studied in the faculties of the American economy

Karl Marx, the most studied in the faculties of the American economy
The text is the most popular courses in the Communist Manifesto. Just in the homeland of capitalism

It Karl Marx the economist most studied in US colleges. Certainly in the light of historical facts such as the depreciation of the goods-work, the falling rate of profit in manufacturing, unemployment and impoverishment, proletarianization and thinning of the middle class, migration from fields to factories (where we are), the philosopher Trier identified several problems related to the industrial revolution and the development of capitalism; but study it as a teacher in the “homeland” of capitalism? Perhaps because they are becoming scorching the “side effects” reported the last century by Marx in the Communist Manifesto.

It is the Manifesto in fact the text that leads the ones most frequently adopted in the American university courses according to data recorded by the Open Syllabus, project collecting – reports MarketWatch financial newspaper that publishes the top 15 economic texts most studied in the US – books and theses awarded to students in a database created by algorithms on published data.

Well, the Communist Manifesto beats The Wealth of Nations, the famous text by Adam Smith, considered the father of the theory of capitalism. For absolute number of “attendance” Marx’s work appears twice as often as that of Adam Smith (3189 versus 1587), although in terms of “coefficient of instruction” – the number of times in which a text is in fact used for the preparation and study – Smith is just a notch below Marx (95.5 against 99.7 of the German philosopher). In both parameters, the first podium is good to Marx.

In third place is the contemporary economist Paul Krugman with 1,081 citations and a score of 89.4 teaching. Other renowned economists on the list of the most studied, among them Mankiw fourth with Macroeconomics and Milton Friedman in sixth with Capitalism and Freedom, but with just 556 appearances and only the coefficient of 65.7; Then Joseph Stiglitz (528 / 62.8) and the great John Maynard Keynes, but his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money earns him a 348 / 44.2 placing it in eighth place, well away from summit . Close the top-10 another big, John Kenneth Galbraith in The Affluent Society and numbers, 177 and 22.5, which pales before the first class Marx.