| This dissertation discusses the development of economic thought in American universities during the late nineteenth century. It examines the ways in which economists formulated their theory and their conception of the discipline in light of the intellectual and institutional ferment of that period. It focuses on Francis Bowen, Charles F. Dunbar, F. W. Taussig, J. Laurence Laughlin, William Graham Sumner, Arthur T. Hadley, Francis A. Walker, Richard T. Ely, Henry Carter Adams, Simon Patten, E. J. James and John Bates Clark. These men assumed a central role in the formation of departments of economics at major universities and in the professionalization of the discipline. Their ideas and their careers reflect the response of economics to the rise of evolutionary and historicist ideas and to the reconstruction of academic institutions.;The dissertation begins with a discussion of the intellectual context in which economics existed at mid-century. During the 1860s, orthodoxy in economic thought depended upon classical theory, Scottish Common Sense philosophy and republican social and political ideas. However, the rise of evolutionary thought and historicism created challenges for the philosophical assumptions of the orthodoxy. In addition, economists faced a host of unprecedented economic problems associated with industrialization. Hence, the orthodoxy received criticism from several different sources, the most provocative of which was the "New School" of economic theory. The New School proposed a dramatic revision of economic theory, and it was the driving force behind the establishment of the American Economic Association which sought to become the central professional organization. Throughout the 1880s, the New School engaged in a debate with defenders of the classical orthodoxy about the proper nature of economic thought and the proper role for economists. By the turn of the century, the emergence of neo-classical theory, led by Clark, effected intellectual compromise. Neo-classicism became the intellectual foundation for professionalization. It retained the essential structure of classical theory while responding to the challenges of evolutionary ideas, historicism and the New School. It also provided an effective set of instruments for describing contemporary economic problems. However, it did not effect a real philosophical or intellectual revolution in economics. |
