Throughout the history of economic thought, the entrepreneur a wide variety of roles. Once cast as a fundamental agent in production, distribution and growth theories, he has now surprisingly disappeared from economic theory.

This volume accounts for this disappearance, exploring how and why such a fundamental explanatory variable disappeared from economic theory. Barreto provides a concise review and classification of the many entrepreneurial theories put forward throughout the history of economic thought. The author illustrates that the decline of the entrepreneur in economic theory coincides with the rise of "the firm" as an organizing principle and considers how the replacement of the human element with a mechanistic one has led to disenchantment with microeconomic theory.

This fascinating book will interest economists from a range of disciplines including the history of economic thought, microeconomics and entrepreneurship.