Abstract
The history of American economics following the founding of the American Economic Association in 1885 is not a simple linear narrative of the triumph of neoclassical economics over historical economics. On the contrary, American economics remained a highly plural enterprise until the 1930s. Although there was strife in the 1880s over the proper method of doing economic research, this strife quickly gave way to a long period of détente. Only following the secularization of economics in the 1920s and the advent of the synthesis of neoclassical and Keynesian economics in the 1940s did this pluralism end.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Bibliography
Backhouse, R.E. 1998. The transformation of US economics 1920–1960: Viewed through a survey of journal articles. History of Political Economy 30(Suppl.): 85–107. In Interwar pluralism to postwar neoclassicism, ed. M.S. Morgan, and M. Rutherford. Durham: Duke University Press.
Barber, W.J. 1985. From new era to new deal: Herbert Hoover, the economists, and American economic policy, 1921–1933. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Barber, W.J. 1988. Breaking the academic mould: Economists and American higher learning in the nineteenth century. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.
Barber, W.J. 1996. Designs within disorder: Franklin D. Roosevelt, the economists, and the shaping of American economic policy, 1933–1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Barber, W.J. 2003. American economics to 1900. In A companion to the history of economic thought, ed. W.J. Samuels, J.E. Biddle, and J.B. Davis. Oxford: Blackwell.
Bateman, B.W. 1998. Clearing the ground: The demise of the social gospel movement and the rise of neoclassicism in American economics. History of Political Economy 30(Suppl.): 29–52. In Interwar pluralism to postwar neoclassicism, ed. M.S. Morgan, and M. Rutherford. Durham: Duke University Press.
Bateman, B.W. 2001. Make a righteous number: Social surveys, the men and religion forward movement, and quantification in American economics. History of Political Economy 33(Suppl.): 57–85. In The age of economic measurement, ed. J.L. Klein, and M.S. Morgan. Durham: Duke University Press.
Bateman, B.W. 2004. Why institutional economics matters as a category of historical analysis. Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology 22A: 219–256.
Bateman, B.W. 2005. Bringing in the state?: The life and times of laissez-faire in the 19th century United States. History of Political Economy 37(Suppl.). In The role of government in the history of political economy, ed. Steven Medema and Peter Boettke. Durham: Duke University Press.
Bateman, B.W., and E. Kapstein. 1999. Retrospectives: Between god and the market: The religious roots of the American economic association. Journal of Economic Perspectives 13(4): 249–258.
Bernstein, M. 2001. A perilous progress: Economists and public purpose in twentieth century America. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Biddle, J. 1998. Institutional economics: A case of reproductive failure? History of Political Economy 30(Suppl.): 108–133. In Interwar pluralism to postwar neoclassicism, ed. M.S. Morgan, and M. Rutherford. Durham: Duke University Press.
Bowen, H.R. 1953. Graduate education in economics. American Economic Review 43: 1–223.
Chamberlin, E.S. 1933. The theory of monopolistic competition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Coats, A.W. 1988. The educational revolution and the professionalization of American economics. In Breaking the academic mould: Economists and American higher learning in the nineteenth century, ed. William J. Barber. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.
Coats, A.W. 1992a. British and American economic essays, On the history of economic thought. Vol. 1. London: Routledge.
Coats, A.W. 1992b. British and American economic essays, The sociology and professionalization of economics. Vol. 2. London: Routledge.
Cohen, N. 2002. The reconstruction of American liberalism, 1865–1914. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Colander, D., R. Holt, and J.B. Rosser, ed. 2004. The changing face of economics: Conversations with cutting edge economists. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Danbom, D. 1987. The world of hope: Progressives and the struggle for an ethical public life. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Dorfman, J. 1949. The economic mind in American civilization. Vol. 3, 1865–1918. New York: Viking Press.
Douglas, P.H. 1927. The modern technique of mass production and its relation to wages. Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science 12: 17–42.
Fisher, I. 1911. The purchasing power of money. New York: Macmillan.
Fisher, I. 1923. The business cycle largely ‘a dance of the dollar’. Journal of the American Statistical Association 18: 1024–1028.
Fisher, I. 1925. Our unstable dollar and the so-called business cycle. Journal of the American Statistical Association 20: 179–202.
Foster, W.T., and W. Catchings. 1923. Money. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Foster, W.T., and W. Catchings. 1925. Profits. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Foster, W.T., and W. Catchings. 1928. The road to plenty. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Furner, M.O. 1975. Advocacy and objectivity: A crisis in the professionalization of American social sciences, 1865–1905. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press.
Hadley, A. 1885. Railroad transportation. New York/London: G.P. Putnam.
Herbst, J. 1965. The German historical school in American scholarship: A study in the transfer of scholarship. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Hodgson, G. 2004. The evolution of institutional economics: Agency, structure and darwinism in American institutionalism. London/New York: Routledge.
Laidler, D.W. 1999. Fabricating the Keynesian revolution: Studies of the inter-war literature on money, the cycle, and unemployment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Laughlin, J.L. 1885. The history of bimetallism in the United States. 4th ed, 1898. New York: Appleton.
Marty, M. 1986. Protestantism in the United States: Righteous empire. New York: Scribners.
Mehrling, P. 1997. The money interest and the public interest: American monetary thought, 1920–1970. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Morgan, M.S. 1990. A history of econometric analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Morgan, M.S., and M. Rutherford. 1998. Interwar pluralism to postwar neoclassicism. Durham: Duke University Press.
Ross, D. 1991. The origins of American social science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rutherford, M. 1999. Institutionalism as ‘scientific’ economics. In From classical economics to the theory of the firm: Essays in honour of D.P. O’Brien, ed. R.E. Backhouse and J. Creedy. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Rutherford, M. 2000. Understanding institutional economics: 1918–1929. Journal of the History of Economic Thought 22: 277–308.
Rutherford, M., and C.T. DesRoches. 2008. The institutionalist reaction to Keynesian economics. Journal of the History of Economic Thought.
Snyder, C. 1924. New measures in the equation of exchange. American Economic Review 14: 699–713.
Taussig, F. 1888. Tariff history of the United States. New York/London: G.P. Putnam & Sons.
Yonay, Y. 1998. The struggle for the soul of economics: Institutionalist and neoclassical economists in America between the wars. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2018 Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
About this entry
Cite this entry
Bateman, B.W. (2018). United States, Economics in (1885–1945). In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_2676
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_2676
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-95188-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-95189-5
eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences