Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T06:02:59.918Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Understanding Institutional Economics: 1918–1929

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2009

Malcolm Rutherford
Malcolm Rutherford
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

All attempts to define American institutionalism, whether in terms of a set of key methodological or theoretical principles or in terms of the contributions of the three generally accepted “founding” figures of Thorstein Veblen, Wesley Mitchell, and John R. Commons, have run into a problem with the apparent disparities within the movement. In terms of the three “founders” there are obvious and quite dramatic differences between the methodologies and theoretical directions of the three men. Veblen is associated with an evolutionary approach, a key distinction between pecuniary institutions and technological or industrial requirements, and a biting critique of orthodox theory and business practices; Mitchell with quantitative methods and detailed research on business cycles, an approach he established at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); Commons with documentary histories, work on labor issues and public utility regulation, and an analytical scheme emphasizing the evolution of legal institutions and processes of dispute resolution. The same problem shows up with more explicit types of definition that often seem to capture only some parts or aspects of the movement and not others, or are so broad as to lack much specific content. Institutionalism easily appears as incoherent, as little more than a set of individual research programs with nothing in common other than a questioning of more orthodox theory and method. Thus, Mark Blaug has stated that institutionalism “was never more than a tenuous inclination to dissent from orthodox economics” (Blaug 1978, p. 712), and George Stigler has claimed that institutionalism had “no positive agenda of research,” “no set of problems or new methods,” nothing but “a stance of hostility to the standard theoretical tradition” (quoted in Kitch 1983, p. 170). This view still finds wide currency— for example Oliver Williamson has recently argued that “unable or unwilling to offer a rival research agenda, the older institutional economics was given over to methodological objections to orthodoxy” (Williamson 1998b, p. 24; see also 1998a).

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the History of Economic Thought , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , September 2000 , pp. 277 - 308
Copyright
Copyright © The History of Economics Society 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

AtkinsWillard, E. Willard, E., McConnell, Donald W., Edwards, Corwin D., Raushenbush, Carl, Friedrich, Anton A., and Reed, Louis S.. 1931. Economic Behavior: An Institutional Approach. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Ayres, Clarence E. 1918. “The Epistemological Significance of Social Psychology.” Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods (01 17): 35–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ayres, Clarence E. 1921a. “Instinct and Capacity-I.” Journal of Philosophy 18 (10 13): 561–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ayres, Clarence E. 1921b. “Instinct and Capacity-II.” Journal of Philosophy 19 (10 27): 600–606.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ayres, Clarence E. 1936. “Fifty Years Developments in Ideas of Human Nature and Motivation.” American Economic Review 26 (03): 224–36.Google Scholar
Backhouse, Roger E. 1998. “The Transformation of American Economics, 1920–1960, Viewed Through a Survey of Journal Articles.” In Morgan, Mary S. and Rutherford, Malcolm, eds., From Interwar Pluralism to Postwar Neoclassicism, Annual Supplement to vol. 30 of History of Political Economy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 85–107.Google Scholar
Blaug, Mark. 1978. Economic Theory in Retrospect, 3rd. ed.London: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Breit, William and Culbertson, William Patton. 1976. “Clarence Edwin Ayres: An Intellectual's Portrait.” In Breit, William and Culbertson, William Patton, eds., Science and Ceremony: The Institutional Economics of C. E. Ayres. Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 3–22.Google Scholar
Burns, E. M. 1931. “Does Institutional Economics Complement or Compete with ‘Orthodox’ Economics?” American Economic Review 21 (03): 80–87.Google Scholar
Camic, Charles. 1992. “Reputation and Predecessor Selection: Parsons and the Institutionalists.” American Sociological Review 57 (08): 421–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, J. M. 1915. “The Concept of Value.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 29 (08): 663–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, J. M. 1916. “The Changing Basis of Economic Responsibility.” Journal of Political Economy 24 (03): 209–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, J. M. 1917. “Business Acceleration and the Law of Demand: A Technical Factor in Business Cycles.” Journal of Political Economy 25 (03): 217–35.Google Scholar
Clark, J. M. 1918. “Economics and Modern Psychology, I and II.” Journal of Political Economy 26 (01, February): 1–30, 136–66.Google Scholar
Clark, J. M. 1919. “Economic Theory in an Era of Social Readjustment.” American Economic Review 9 (03): 280–90.Google Scholar
Clark, J. M. 1921. “Soundings in Non-Euclidean Economics.” American Economic Review 11 (03): 132–43.Google Scholar
Clark, J. M. 1923. Studies in the Economics of Overhead Costs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Clark, J. M. 1926. Social Control of Business. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Clark, J. M. 1927. “Recent Developments in Economics.” In Hayes, Edward C., ed., Recent Developments in the Social Sciences. Philadelphia, PA: Lippencott, pp. 213–306.Google Scholar
Clark, John M., Hamilton, Walton H., and Moulton, Harold G., eds. 1918. Readings in the Economics of War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Coats, A. W. 1960. “The First Two Decades of the American Economic Association.” American Economic Review 50 (09): 555–74.Google Scholar
Commons, John R. 1907. “The Wisconsin Public-Utilities Law.” American Review of Reviews 36 (08): 221–24.Google Scholar
Commons, John R. 1909. “American Shoemakers, 1648–1895: A Sketch of Industrial Evolution.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 24 (11): 39–84.Google Scholar
Commons, John R. 1910. “How Wisconsin Regulates Her Public Utilities.” American Review of Reviews 42 (08): 215–17.Google Scholar
Commons, John R. 1924. The Legal Foundations of Capitalism. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968.Google Scholar
Commons, John R. 1927. “Price Stabilization and the Federal Reserve System.” The Annalist 29 (04 1): 459–62.Google Scholar
Commons, John R. 1931. “Institutional Economics.” American Economic Review 21 (12): 648–57.Google Scholar
Commons, John R. 1934. Institutional Economics: Its Place in Political Economy. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Commons, John R. 1936. “Institutional Economics.” American Economic Review 26 (03): 237–49.Google Scholar
Commons, John R., Phillips, U. B., Gilmore, E. A., Sumner, H. L., and Andrews, J. B., eds. 1910. A Documentary History of American Industrial Society, 10 vols. Cleveland, OH: Arthur H. Clark.Google Scholar
Commons, John R., Saposs, D. J., Sumner, H. L., Mittleman, E. B., Hoagland, H. E., Andrews, J. B., and Perlman, Selig. 1918. History of Labor in the United States, 4 vols. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Copeland, Morris A. 1930. “Psychology and the Natural Science Point of View.” Reprinted in Fact and Theory in Economics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1958, pp. 11–36.Google Scholar
Dorfman, Joseph. 1934. Thorstein Veblen and His America. New York: Viking.Google Scholar
Dorfman, Joseph. 1955. “The Department of Economics.” In R. Gordon Hoxie, et al., A History of the Faculty of Political Science, Columbia University. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Dorfman, Joseph. 1959. The Economic Mind in American Civilization, vols. 4 and 5. New York: Viking.Google Scholar
Dorfman, Joseph. 1963. The Background of Institutional Economics. In Institutional Economics: Veblen, Commons, and Mitchell Reconsidered. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Dorfman, Joseph. 1973. “New Light on Veblen.” Introduction to Thorstein Veblen, Essays Reviews and Reports, edited by Dorfman, Joseph. Clifton, NJ: Augustus M. Kelley, pp. 5–326.Google Scholar
Dorfman, Joseph. 1974. “Walton Hale Hamilton and Industrial Policy.” In Introduction to Walton H. Hamilton, Industrial Policy and Institutionalism: Selected Essays. Clifton, NJ: Augustus M. Kelley, pp. 5–28.Google Scholar
Downey, E. H. 1910. “The Futility of Marginal Utility.” Journal of Political Economy 18 (04): 253–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Downey, E. H. 1917. Introduction to Robert F. Hoxie, Trade Unionism in the United States. New York: Appleton, pp. xiii–xxxiii.Google Scholar
Edie, Lionel D. 1922. Principles of the New Economics. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell.Google Scholar
Edie, Lionel D. 1926. Economic Principles and Problems. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell.Google Scholar
Edie, Lionel D. 1927. “Some Positive Contributions of the Institutional Concept.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 41 (05): 405–40.Google Scholar
ElyRichard, T. Richard, T. 1914. Property and Contract in Their Relation to the Distribution of Wealth. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
ElyRichard, T. Richard, T. 1932. “Round Table Conferences: Institutional Economics.” American Economic Review 22 (03): 114–16.Google Scholar
Fried, Barbara H. 1998. The Progressive Assault on Laissez Faire: Robert Hale and the First Law and Economics Movement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gruchy, Allan G. 1947. Modern Economic Thought. New York: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Hale, Robert L. 1921. “The ‘Physical Value’ Fallacy in Rate Cases.” Yale Law Journal 30: 710–31.Google Scholar
Gruchy, Allan G. 1923. “Coercion and Distribution in a Supposedly Non-Coercive State.” Political Science Quarterly 38 (09): 470–94.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Walton H. 1916a. “The Development of Hoxie's Economics.” Reprinted in Hamilton, Walton H., Industrial Policy and Institutionalism: Selected Essays. Clifton, NJ: Augustus M. Kelley, 1974, pp. 53–81.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Walton H. 1916b. “Tendencies in Economic Theory-Discussion.” American Economic Review 6 (03): 164–66.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Walton H. 1918a. “The Price System and Social Policy.” Journal of Political Economy 26 (01): 31–68.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Walton H. 1918b. “The Place of Value Theory in Economics, I and II.” Journal of Political Economy 26 (03, 04): 217–5, 275–07.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Walton H. ed. 1919a. Current Economic Problems, rev. ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Walton H. 1919b. “The Institutional Approach to Economic Theory.” American Economic Review 9 (03): 309–18.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Walton H. 1922. “A Theory of the Rate of Wages.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 36 (08): 581–625.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Walton H. 1930. “Affectation With Public Interest.” Yale Law Journal 39 (06): 1089–1112.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Walton H. 1958. “Veblen—Then and Now.” In Dowd, Douglas, ed., Thorstein Veblen: A Critical Reappraisal. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Walton H. and May, Stacy. 1923. The Control of Wages. New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1968.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Walton H. and Wright, Helen R.. 1925. The Case Of Bituminous Coal. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Walton H. 1928. A Way of Order for Bituminous Coal. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Homan, Paul T. 1932. “An Appraisal of Institutional Economics.” American Economic Review 22 (03): 10–17.Google Scholar
Hoxie, Robert F. 1917. Trade Unionism in the United States. New York: D. Appleton.Google Scholar
King, Willford I. 1923. Employment, Hours, and Earnings in Prosperity and Depression. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research.Google Scholar
Kitch, Edmund W., ed. 1983. “The Fire of Truth: A Remembrance of Law and Economics at Chicago, 1923–1970.” Journal of Law and Economics 26 (04): 163–234.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Means, Gardiner C. 1935. “Industrial Prices and Their Relative Inflexibility.” Senate Document 13, 74th Congress, 1st Session. Washington DC: U.S. Govt. Printing Office.Google Scholar
MillsFrederick, C. Frederick, C. 1927. The Behavior of Prices. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research.Google Scholar
MillsFrederick, C. Frederick, C. 1929. “Price Movements and Related Industrial Changes.” In Recent Economic Changes, Report of the Committee on Recent Economic Changes of the President's Conference on Unemployment. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Wesley C. 1910a. “The Rationality of Economic Activity, I.” Journal of Political Economy 18 (02): 97–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, Wesley C. 1910b. “The Rationality of Economic Activity, II.” Journal of Political Economy 18 (03): 197–216.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Wesley C. 1912. “The Backward Art of Spending Money.” American Economic Review 2 (06): 269–81.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Wesley C. 1913. Business Cycles. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Wesley C. 1914. “Human Behavior and Economics: A Survey of Recent Literature.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 29 (11): 1–47.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Wesley C. 1916. “The Role of Money in Economic Theory.” American Economic Review 6 (03): 140–61.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Wesley C. 1923. “Making Goods and Making Money.” Reprinted in Mitchell, Wesley C., TheBackward Art of Spending Money. New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1950, pp. 137–8.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Wesley C. 1924a. “Commons on the Legal Foundations of Capitalism.” American Economic Review 14 (06): 240–53.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Wesley C. 1924b. “The Prospects of Economics.” In Tugwell, Rexford G., ed., The Trend of Economics Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1971, pp. 1–34.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Wesley C. 1925. “Quantitative Analysis in Economic Theory.” American Economic Review 15 (03): 1–12.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Wesley C. 1927. Business Cycles: The Problem and its Setting. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Wesley C. 1928. “Letter From Wesley C. Mitchell to John M. Clark.” In J. M. Clark, Preface to Social Economics. New York: Parrar and Rinehart, 1936, pp. 410–16.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Wesley C. 1929a. “Sombart's Hochkapitalismus.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 43 (02): 303–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, Wesley C. 1929b. “Thorstein Veblen, 1857–1929.” New Republic 60 (09 4): p. 66–68.Google Scholar
Ogburn, William F. 1919. “The Psychological Basis for the Economic Interpretation of History.” American Economic Review 9 (03): 291–308.Google Scholar
Parsons, Talcott. 1976. “Clarence Ayres's Economics and Sociology.” In Breit, William and Culbertson, William Patton, eds., Science and Ceremony: The Institutional Economics of C. E. Ayres. Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 175–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perlman, Selig. 1928. A Theory of the Labor Movement. New York: Macmillan. Ross, Dorothy. 1991. The Origins of American Social Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ross, E. A. 1901. Social Control. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Rutherford, Malcolm. 1994. “J. A. Hobson and American Institutionalism: Underconsumption and Technological Change.” In Pheby, John, ed., J. A. Hobson After Fifty Years. London: Macmillan, pp. 188–210.Google Scholar
Rutherford, Malcolm. 1997. “American Institutionalism and the History of Economics.” Journal of the History of Economic Thought 19 (Fall): 178–95.Google Scholar
Rutherford, Malcolm. 1998. “Thorstein Veblen's Evolutionary Programme: A Promise Unfulfilled.” Cambridge Journal of Economics 22 (07): 463–77.Google Scholar
Rutherford, Malcolm. 1999. “Institutionalism as ‘Scientific’ Economics.” In Backhouse, Roger and Greedy, John, eds., From Classical Economics to the Theory of the Firm: Essays in Honour of D. P. O'Brien. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, pp. 223–42.Google Scholar
Samuels, Warren J. 1973. “The Economy as a System of Power and its Legal Bases: The Legal Economics of Robert Lee Hale.” University of Miami Law Review 27 (Spring and Summer): 261–371.Google Scholar
Shute, Laurence. 1997. John Maurice Clark: A Social Economics for the Twenty-First Century. New York: St. Martin's.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slichter, Sumner H. 1924. “The Organization and Control of Economic Activity.” In Tugwell, Rexford G., ed., The Trend of Economics. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1971, pp. 303–55.Google Scholar
Slichter, Sumner H. 1928. Modern Economic Society. New York: H. Holt, 1936.Google Scholar
Stewart, Walter W. 1919. “Economic Theory—Discussion.” American Economic Review 9 (03): 319–20.Google Scholar
Taylor, Horace. 1928. Making Goods and Making Money. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Taylor, Horace. 1938. Contemporary Economic Problems and Trends. New York: Harcourt, Brace.Google Scholar
Thorp, Willard L. 1928. Economic Institutions. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Tugwell, Rexford G. 1921. “The Economic Basis for Business Regulation.” American Economic Review 11 (03): 643–58.Google Scholar
Tugwell, Rexford G. 1922a. The Economic Basis of Public Interest. New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1968.Google Scholar
Tugwell, Rexford G. 1922b. “Human Nature in Economic Theory.” Journal of Political Economy 30 (06): 317–45.Google Scholar
Tugwell, Rexford G. 1924a. “Experimental Economics.” In Tugwell, Rexford G., ed., The Trend of Economics. Port Washington NY: Kennikat Press, 1971, pp. 370–22.Google Scholar
Tugwell, Rexford G. ed. 1924b. The Trend of Economics. Port Washington NY: Kennikat Press, 1971.Google Scholar
Tugwell, Rexford G. 1930. “Human Nature and Social Economy, I and II.” Journal of Philosophy 17 and 18 (08 14 and 28): 449–57, 477–92.Google Scholar
Tugwell, Rexford G. 1931. “The Theory of Occupational Obsolescence.” Political Science Quarterly 46 (06): 171–227.Google Scholar
Tugwell, Rexford G. 1932. “Flaws in the Hoover Economic Plan.” Current History 35 (01): 525–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tugwell, Rexford G. 1937. “Wesley Mitchell: An Evaluation.” New Republic 92 (10 6): 238–40.Google Scholar
Tugwell, Rexford G., Munroe, Thomas, and Stryker, Roy E.. 1925. American Economic Life and the Means of Its Improvement. New York: Harcourt, Brace.Google Scholar
Tugwell, Rexford G., and Hill, Howard C.. 1934. Our Economic Society and its Problems. New York: Harcourt, Brace.Google Scholar
Veblen, Thorstein B. 1925. “Economic Theory in the Calculable Future.” American Economic Review 15 (03): 48–55.Google Scholar
Williamson, Oliver E. 1998a. “The Institutions of Governance.” American Economic Review 88 (05): 75–79.Google Scholar
Williamson, Oliver E. 1998b. “Transaction Cost Economics: How it Works: Where it is Headed.” De Economist 146 (04): 23–58.Google Scholar
Woirol, Gregory R. 1999. “The Contributions of Frederick C. Mills.” Journal of the History of Economic Thought 21 (06): 163–85.Google Scholar
Wolfe, A. B. 1936. “Institutional Reasonableness and Value.” Philosophical Review 45 (03): 192–206.Google Scholar
Wolman, Leo. 1924. The Growth of American Trade Unions, 1880–1923. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research.Google Scholar
Yonay, Yuval P. 1998. The Struggle Over the Soul of Economics: Institutionalist and Neoclassical Economists in America Between the Wars. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Young, Allyn A. 1925. “The Trend of Economics as Seen by Some American Economists.” Reprinted in Young, Allyn A., Economic Problems Old and New. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1927, pp. 232–60.Google Scholar