The neoclassical synthesis was so frequently discussed throughout the writings of a wide variety of economists that it is impossible to give just a few references. The interested reader might look at Paul Samuelson's textbook Economics (third edition, 1980) for his initial statement of the concept. The classic statement of Keynesian fiscal policy, together with a restatement of neoclassical welfare economics, is Abba P. Lerner, The Economics of Control (1944). Beyond that, three books were influential in providing the theoretic and intellectual foundations for the drive to deregulate the American economy that began in the late 1970s. They were William Fellner, Competition Among the Few (1949), which used ideas from the theory of games; Alfred Kahn, The Economics of Regulation (2 vols., 1970-1971), which pointed out that regulation had evolved into a system that protected the regulated industries rather than the public; and William J. Baumol, Contested Markets and the Theory of Industry Structure (1982), which argued that the threat of competition was often enough to control the market power of large firms.
The persistence of poverty in America was forcefully presented in Michael Harrington, The Other America (revised edition, 1970). The other extreme of the distribution of income and wealth is shown in G. William Domhof, Who Rules America? (1967) and Ferdinand Lundberg, The Rich and the Super Rich (1968). The problem of achieving equitable income distribution is discussed in Arthur M. Okun, Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff (1975). David Griffith, Low-Wage Labor in the United States (1993) and John E. Schwarz and Thomas J. Volgi, The Forgotten Americans (1992) document the working poor.
Key works in the development of modern growth theory include Roy Harrod, "An Essay in Dynamic Theory," Economic Journal, Vol. 49, no. 193 (March 1939) pp. 14-33, and "Second Essay in Dynamic Theory," Economic Journal, Vol. 70, no. 278 (June 1960); Evsey Domar, "Expansion and Employment," American Economic Review, Vol. 37, no. 1 (March 1947), pp. 34-55; Robert M. Solow, "A Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth," Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol.
70, No. 1 (February 1956), pp. 65-94, and Growth Theory: An Exposition (1978); Edmund Phelps, "The Golden Rule of Accumulation: A Fable for Growthmen," American Economic Review, Vol. 51, no. 4 (September 1961), pp. 638-43; and Frank H. Hahn and R. C. O. Matthews, "The Theory of Economic Growth: A Survey," Economic Journal, Vol. 74, No. 296 (December 1964), pp. 779-902, with an inclusive bibliography.
Friedrich von Hayek's concept of the market economy as a coordinating mechanism is presented in his Individualism and Economic Order (1949). His broader economic and political philosophy is set out in The Constitution of Liberty (1960), and his attack on socialism in The Road to Serfdom (1944). G. R. Steele, The Economics of Friedrich Hayek (1993) emphasizes his studies in monetary theory and business cycles. John C. Wood and Ronald Woods, eds., Friedrich A. Hayek: Critical Assessments (4 vols., 1991) is a very valuable collection of essays on Hayek by renowned international scholars. There are two recent collections of papers on the contemporary Austrian school: Stephen Littlechild, ed., Austrian Economics (3 vols., 1990) and Peter J. Boettke, ed.. The Elgar Companion to Austrian Economics (2 vols., 1994).
There is no good general survey of contemporary high theory in economics outside of textbooks and scholarly accounts. Frank Hahn presents an excellent summary and critique of "General Equilibrium Theory" in Chapter 3 of his Equilibrium and Macroeconomics (1984). E. Roy Weintraub, General Equilibrium Theory (1974) is a useful account and critique for those with limited mathematics, while Bent Hansen, A Survey of General Equilibrium Systems (1970) is for those with more mathematics. The reader without a strong grounding in mathematics could get the flavor of axiomatic mathematical general equilibrium theory by reading the short introductory sections of each chapter in Gerard Debreu's Theory of Value (1959). Readers with a more sophisticated knowledge of mathematics can go beyond that, but it will be slow going. The same is true of Kenneth Arrow and Frank H. Hahn, General Competitive Analysis (1971).
Piero Sraffa's Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities (1960) offers an alternative theoretical system based on "objective" technological relationships instead of "subjective" individual preferences. Closely related to Wassily Leontief's input-output analysis, it was rejected by the defenders of the neoclassical faith in a vitriolic "capital controversy" of the 1960s, chronicled in Jeffrey Harcourt, Some Cambridge Controversies in the Theory of Capital (1972) and Mark Blaug, The Cambridge Revolution: Success or Failure? (1974). American developments of Post Keynesian ideas are Sidney Weintraub, Capitalism's Inflation and Unemployment Crisis (1978); Paul Davidson, Money and the Real World (second edition, 1978); and Alfred S. Eichner, The Megacorp and Oligopoly (1976). The Journal of Post Keynesian Economics provides current ideas from this branch of economic thinking. Other important works in this tradition include Michael Kalecki, Essays in the Theory of Economic Fluctuations (1939) and Joan Robinson's paper "The Production Function and the Theory of Capital" (1953).
The new neoclassical macroeconomics is best pursued through individual papers rather than a single source. A good statement of the natural rate of unemployment hypothesis is Milton Friedman, "Nobel Lecture: Inflation and Unemployment," Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 85 (June 1977), pp. 451-72, especially pp. 456-59. The seminal paper on the tradeoff between unemployment
and wage rates, which the new conservatives modified to a tradeoff between unemployment and prices, is A. W. Phillips, "The Relationship Between Unemployment and the Rate of Change of Money Wage Rates in the U.K., 1861-1937," Economica, Vol. 25 (November 1958), pp. 283-99. The theory of rational expectations is presented in Thomas J. Sargent and Neil Wallace, "Rational Expectations and the Theory of Economic Policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Vol. 2 (April 1976), pp. 169-83. John F. Muth, "Rational Expectations and the Theory of Price Movements," Econometrica, Vol. 29, No. 3 (July 1961), pp. 315-35, originated the theory. The general reader may find these articles in professional journals rather tough going. Portions of G. K. Shaw, Rational Expectations: An Elementary Exposition (1984) are not all that elementary.
The theory of real business cycles, or equilibrium business cycles, can be explored in three scholarly papers: Robert Lucas, "An Equilibrium Model of the Trade Cycle," Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 83, No. 6 (1975), pp. 1113-44; John B. Long, Jr., and Charles I. Plosser, "Real Business Cycles," Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 91, No. 1 (February 1983), pp. 39-69; and N. Gregory Mankiw, "Real Business Cycles: A New Keynesian Perspective," Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 3 (Summer 1989), pp. 79-90. For a critique, look at Lawrence H. Summers, "Some Skeptical Observations on Real Business Cycle Theory," Federal Reserve Bank of Minnesota Review, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Fall 1986), pp. 23-27.