The Institutionalist Movement in American Economics, 1918–1947: Science and Social Control (Historical Perspectives on Modern Economics) - Softcover

Rutherford, Malcolm

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1107626080 ISBN 13: 9781107626089

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2013

Synopsis

This book provides a detailed picture of the institutionalist movement in American economics concentrating on the period between the two World Wars. The discussion brings a new emphasis on the leading role of Walton Hamilton in the formation of institutionalism, on the special importance of the ideals of "science" and "social control" embodied within the movement, on the large and close network of individuals involved, on the educational programs and research organizations created by institutionalists, and on the significant place of the movement within the mainstream of interwar American economics. In these ways the book focuses on the group most closely involved in the active promotion of the movement, on how they themselves constructed it, on its original intellectual appeal and promise, and on its institutional supports and sources of funding. The reasons for the movement's loss of appeal in the years around the end of World War II are also discussed, particularly in terms of the arrival of Keynesian economics, econometrics, and new definitions of "science" as applied to economics.

About this title

Book Description:

This book deals with the institutionalist movement in American economics, a movement that was a significant part of American economics in the interwar period. This movement emphasized the importance of institutions, an empirical approach, and the need for new forms of "social control."

About the Author:

Malcolm Rutherford is Professor of Economics at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, and the leading authority on the history of American institutional economics. He has published widely on this topic in History of Political Economy, the Journal of the History of Economic Thought, the European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, the Journal of Economic Perspectives and Labor History. He is the author of Institutions in Economics: The Old and the New Institutionalism, published by Cambridge University Press (1994). Professor Rutherford has served as President of the History of Economics Society and the Association for Evolutionary Economics.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1107626080
• ISBN 13: 9781107626089
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 424