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American Economic Expertise from the Great War to the Cold War: Some Initial Observations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Michael A. Bernstein
Michael A. Bernstein
Affiliation:
The author is Associate Professor of History, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093–0104, and currently an Andrew W. Mellon fellow at the National Humanities Center, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709.
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Abstract

The twentieth-century American economics profession was privileged and shaped by the federal government's need to direct resources and to call on experts. Bureaucratic tendencies to classify and count had an impact on the discipline's self-concept, subdisciplines, and multiple research agendas. A consensus of professional opinion and the standardization of graduate curriculums emerged out of the involvement of economists with governmental affairs. Moreover, American economists played an important role in the reconstitution of the profession overseas after World War II.

Type
Papers Presented at the Forty-Ninth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , June 1990 , pp. 407 - 416
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1990

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References

1 I have a vast amount of literature in mind as I make this claim. But a very good example of the approach to which I allude, that at the same time remains quite open-minded and intellectually generous, is Blaug, Mark, Economic Theory in Retrospect (New York, 1978).Google Scholar

2 Again, it is not possible to note all of the literature which I invoke here. Notable exceptions to the general tendency I mention are Church, R. L., “Economists as Experts: The Rise of an Academic Profession in the United States, 1870–1920”, in Stone, L., ed., The University in Society, vol. 2: Europe, Scotland, and the United States from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century (Princeton, 1974), pp. 571–609Google Scholar; Coats, A. W., “The American Economic Association and the Economics Profession,” Journal of Economic Literature, 23 (12 1985), pp. 1697–1727Google Scholar; and Fumer, Mary O., Advocacy and Objectivity: A Crisis in the Professionalization of American Social Science, 1865–1905 (Lexington, KY, 1975).Google Scholar

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8 Leonard Carmichael, director of National Resources Planning Board, to Bell, June 17, 1941Google Scholar; and Steuart Henderson Britt (National Roster of Scientific and Specialized Personnel) to Sumner Slichter, Nov. 27, 1941, in RAEA, Box 57, Folder: “1940–1944 Classification of Personnel”Google Scholar; Copeland, Morris A. (now of the Office of Production Management) to Slichter, Dec. 8, 1941Google Scholar; Slichter to AEA Executive Committee, Dec. 23, 1941Google Scholar; and Bell to Slichter, May 1, 1941, in RAEA, Box 29, Folder: “Correspondence A-L 1941”Google Scholar; and Holmes, Clyde E. (Office of Production Management) to Bell, Oct. 3, 1941, in RAEA, Box 29, Folder: “Correspondence M-Z 1941”.Google Scholar

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11 “Report on Wartime Changes in Economics Curriculum,” July 7, 1943, and July 15, 1943, in RAEA, Box 32, Folder: “Correspondence M-Z 1943.”Google Scholar

12 Ibid.

13 Taylor, Horace to the AEA Executive Committee, Dec. 16, 1944Google Scholar; Davis, J. S. to Taylor, May 22, 1944Google Scholar; Davis to Spengler, Joseph, May 19, 1944Google Scholar; Davis to O'Leary, Paul M., May 19, 1944Google Scholar; Bell to Taylor, Sept. 20, 1944Google Scholar; and Davis to Taylor, Sept. 22 and 28 and Oct. 7, 1944, in RAEA, Box 58, Folder: “AEA 1944–1951 Committee on Undergraduate Teaching of Economics and Training of Economists.” Also see report by the “(Ad Hoc) Committee on Graduate Training in Economics” to the AEA Executive Committee, Dec. 1, 1950, in RAEA, Box 58, Folder: “AEA 1950–53 (Ad Hoc) Committee on Graduate Training in Economics.”Google Scholar

14 RAEA, Box 57, Folder: “AEA 1944 Committee on Focusing of Informed Opinion.”Google Scholar

15 RAEA, Box 57, Folder: “AEA 1944–1945 Committee to Draft Consensus Report on Function of Government in the Postwar American Economy.”Google Scholar

16 Ibid.

17 Bell to National Roster of Scientific and Specialized Personnel, Mar.. 12, 1948, in RAEA, Box 58, Folder: “AEA 1948–50 National Roster of Scientific and Specialized Personnel.”Google Scholar

18 Shaffer, Kenneth R. (American Book Center for War Devastated Libraries) to Bell, Aug. 8, 1946Google Scholar; Coppock, John O. (UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration–Greece Mission) to the association, Aug. 13, 1946Google Scholar; and Coppock, Joseph D. (U.S. Department of State) to E. A. Goldenweiser, Oct. 7, 1946, in RAEA, Box 33, Folder: “Correspondence A-L 1946.”Google ScholarOutsen, Robert (U.S. Army Colonel) to the association, May 3, 1951Google Scholar; and Bell to Outsen, May 18, 1951, in RAEA, Box 36, Folder: “American Economic Assoc. Corr. 1951, M-Z.”Google Scholar

19 RAEA, Box 93, Folder: “AER July 1944 AEA-ALA Book List on Economics for European Libraries.” On the role of postwar reconstruction in the twentieth-century Americanization of Europe and Asia, see, for example, Hogan, M. J., “American Marshall Planners and the Search for a European Neocapitalism,” American Historical Review, 90 (02 1985), pp. 44–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Maier, C. S., “The Politics of Productivity: Foundations of American International Economic Policy after World War II,” International Organization, 31 (Autumn 1977), pp. 607–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rappaport, A., “The United States and European Integration: The First Phase,” Diplomatic History, 5 (Spring 1981), pp. 121–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Borden, William S., The Pacific Alliance: United States Foreign Economic Policy and Japanese Trade Recovery, 1947–1955 (Madison, 1984)Google Scholar; Horowitz, D., ed., Corporations and the Cold War (New York, 1969)Google Scholar; Mee, Charles L. Jr, The Marshall Plan: The Launching of the Pax Americana (New York, 1984)Google Scholar; and Milward, Alan S., The Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1945–1951 (London, 1984).Google Scholar