Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T06:50:16.823Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Economic History in Departments of Economics

The Case of the University of Chicago, 1892 to the Present

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

David Mitch
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Since the emergence of distinctive social science disciplines in American universities in the late nineteenth century, there have been recurring tensions over whether history should be practiced within or pursued separately from particular social science disciplines. This study considers this issue for the case of economic history in the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago. Economic history was active as an inter-disciplinary field throughout the twentieth century, and it had a substantial presence throughout the twentieth century at Chicago, in one of the world’s leading economics departments. This study focuses on how economic historians and economists at Chicago have conceived of the relationship between economic history and economics over the past century. It argues that a key set of tensions has been, on the one hand, developing a conception of the economy that is subject to historical forces yet, on the other hand, allowing adequate scope for employing the tools of economics.

Type
Special Section: The Past, Present, and Future of Economics for History
Information
Social Science History , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , Summer 2011 , pp. 237 - 271
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2011 

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: Primary Sources

Announcements. Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.Google Scholar
Robert, W. Fogel Papers. Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.Google Scholar
Earl, J. Hamilton Papers. Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University.Google Scholar
John, U. Nef Jr. Papers. Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.Google Scholar

References: Secondary Sources

Acemoglu, DaronJohnson, SimonRobinson, James A. (2005) “Institutions as a fundamental cause of long-run growth,” in Aghion, PhilippeDurlauf, Steven N. (eds.) Handbook of Economic Growth. Amsterdam: North Holland: 384–73.Google Scholar
Acemoglu, DaronRobinson, James A. (2006) Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Adcock, Robert (2003) “The emergence of political science as a discipline: History and the study of politics in America, 1875–1910.” History of Political Thought 24: 481–508.Google Scholar
Becker, Gary (2009) “Gary Becker,” in Breit, WilliamHirsch, Barry T. (eds.) Lives of the Laureates: Twenty-three Nobel Economists. 5th ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 251–72.Google Scholar
Church, Robert L. (1965) “The economists study society: Sociology at Harvard, 1891–1902,” in Buck, Paul (ed.) Social Sciences at Harvard, 1860–1920: From Inculcation to the Open Mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press: 18–89.Google Scholar
Cole, Arthur H. (1968) “Economic history in the United States: Formative years of a discipline.” Journal of Economic History 28: 556–89.Google Scholar
Cole, Arthur H.Crandall, Ruth (1964) “The International Scientific Committee on Price History.” Journal of Economic History 24: 381–88.Google Scholar
Davidoff, Nicholas (2002) The Fly Swatter: How My Grandfather Made His Way in the World. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
de Rouvray, Cristel (2004) “‘Old’ economic history in the United States: 1939–1954.” Journal of the History of Economic Thought 2: 221–39.Google Scholar
Dorfman, Joseph (1934) Thorstein Veblen and His America. New York: Viking.Google Scholar
Drukker, J. W. (2006) The Revolution That Bit Its Own Tail: How Economic History Changed Our Ideas on Economic Growth. Amsterdam: Aksant.Google Scholar
Ebenstein, Alan (2003) Friedrich Hayek: A Biography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Fishlow, Albert and Fogel, Robert William (1971) “Quantitative economic history: An interim evaluation of past trends and present tendencies.” Journal of Economic History 31: 15–42.Google Scholar
Fogel, Robert William (1975) “From the Marxists to the Mormons.” Times Literary Supplement, June 13, 667–70.Google Scholar
Fogel, Robert William (1997) “Douglass C. North and economic theory,” in Drobak, John N.Nye, John V. C. (eds.) The Frontiers of the New Institutional Economics. San Diego, CA: Academic: 13–28.Google Scholar
Fogel, Robert William (2000) The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Fogel, Robert WilliamEngerman, Stanley L. (1974) Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Friedman, Milton (2009) “Milton Friedman,” in Breit, WilliamHirsch, Barry T. (eds.) Lives of the Laureates: Twenty-three Nobel Economists. 5th ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 65–77.Google Scholar
Friedman, Milton and Schwartz, Anna Jacobson (1963) A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Furner, Mary (1975) Advocacy and Objectivity: A Crisis in the Professionalization of American Social Science, 1865–1905. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.Google Scholar
Goldin, Claudia (1997) “Exploring the ‘present through the past’: Career and family across the last century.” American Economic Review 87: 396–99.Google Scholar
Goodrich, Carter (1960) “Economic history: One field or two?” Journal of Economic History 20: 531–38.Google Scholar
Gras, N. S. B. (1920) “The present condition of economic history.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 34: 209–24.Google Scholar
Gras, N. S. B. (1941) “Review of Economic History of the United States by Chester W. Wright.” American Economic Review 31: 864–66.Google Scholar
Handman, Max S.Knight, F. H.Heaton, H.Maurer, HeinrichKnight, Melvin M.Jaffé, William (1929) “Economic history.” American Economic Review 19 (supp.): 155–71.Google Scholar
Haskell, Thomas (2000 [1977]) The Emergence of Professional Social Science: The American Social Science Association and the Nineteenth-Century Crisis of Authority. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Heckman, James J. (1997) “The value of quantitative evidence on the effect of the past on the present.” American Economic Review 87: 404–8.Google Scholar
Innis, Harold A. (1950) Empire and Communications. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Innis, Harold A. (1971 [1923]) A History of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Innis, Harold A. (1991 [1951]) The Bias of Communication. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Kitch, Edmond W., ed. (1983) “The fire of truth: A remembrance of law and economics at Chicago, 1932–1970.” Journal of Law and Economics 26: 163–234.Google Scholar
Knight, Frank (1935 [1924]) “The limitations of scientific method in economics,” in The Ethics of Competition and Other Essays. New York: Harper and Row: 105–47.Google Scholar
Knight, Frank (1956 [1928]) “Historical and theoretical issues in the problem of modern capitalism,” in On the History and Method of Economics: Selected Essays. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 89–103.Google Scholar
Knight, Frank (1956 [1951]) “Economics,” in On the History and Method of Economics: Selected Essays. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 3–33.Google Scholar
Laughlin, J. Laurence (1886) The History of Bimetallism in the United States. New York: Appleton.Google Scholar
McCloskey, Deirdre N. (1976) “Does the past have useful economics?” Journal of Economic Literature 14: 434–61.Google Scholar
McCloskey, Deirdre N. (1978) “The achievements of the cliometric school.” Journal of Economic History 38: 13–28.Google Scholar
McCloskey, Deirdre N. (1987) Econometric History. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
McCloskey, Deirdre N. (2001) “‘An interview with Deirdre McCloskey,’ conducted by Mary Beth Combs.” Newsletter of the Cliometrics Society 16: 3–13.Google Scholar
McCloskey, Deirdre N. (2006) The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McCloskey, Deirdre N.Hersh, George K. Jr. (1990) A Bibliography of Historical Economics to 1980. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Miller, H. Laurence Jr. (1962) “On the ‘Chicago school of economics.’” Journal of Political Economy 70: 64–69.Google Scholar
Mokyr, Joel (2009) The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain, 1700–1850. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Munro, John (2007) “Review of Earl J. Hamilton, American Treasure and the Price Revolution in Spain, 1501–1650.” Economic History Services, January 14, eh.net/node/2741.Google Scholar
Nef, John U. Jr. (1932) The Rise of the British Coal Industry. 2 vols. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Nef, John U. Jr. (1973) Search for Meaning: The Autobiography of a Nonconformist. Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press.Google Scholar
Parker, William N., ed. (1986) Economic History and the Modern Economist. New York: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Ross, Dorothy (1991) The Origins of American Social Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rostow, W. W. (1960) The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sass, Steven Arthur (1978) “Entrepreneurial historians and history: An essay in organized intellect.” PhD diss., Johns Hopkins University.Google Scholar
Schultz, T. W. (1964) Transforming Traditional Agriculture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Schultz, T. W. (1977) “On economic history in extending economics.” Economic Development and Cultural Change 25 (supp.): 245–53.Google Scholar
Schultz, T. W. (1980) “The economics of being poor.” Journal of Political Economy 88: 639–51.Google Scholar
Schultz, T. W. (1989) “Introduction: The economics of historical economics,” in Galenson, David W. (ed.) Markets in History: Economic Studies of the Past. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 1–4.Google Scholar
Schultz, T. W. (1990) Restoring Economic Equilibrium: Human Capital in the Modernizing Economy. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Schumpeter, Joseph A. (1954) The History of Economic Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Solow, Robert E. (1986) “Economics: Is something missing?” in Parker, William N. (ed.) Economic History and the Modern Economist. New York: Blackwell: 21–29.Google Scholar
Stigler, George J. (1984) “Economics: The imperial science?” Scandinavian Journal of Economics 86: 301–13.Google Scholar
Tawney, R. H. (1912) The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century. London: Longmans, Green.Google Scholar
Tawney, R. H. (1971 [1932]) “The study of economic history,” in Harte, N. B. (ed.) The Study of Economic History. London: Cass: 87–107.Google Scholar
Tawney, R. H. (1972) R. H. Tawney’s Commonplace Book, ed. Winter, J. M.Joslin, D. M.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, George Rogers (2002 [1972]) “Economic history essay: George Rogers Taylor.” Interview with Hugh G. J. Aitken. Newsletter of the Cliometrics Society 19: 38–50.Google Scholar
Terrill, Ross (1973) R. H. Tawney and His Times: Socialism as Fellowship. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Usher, Abbott PaysonHauser, Henri and Bloch, Marc (1929) “L’histoire economique aux Etats-Unis.” Annales d’histoire économique et sociale 1: 236–40.Google Scholar
Weber, Max (1930 [1904]) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Parsons, Talcott. New York: Scribner.Google Scholar
Winter, J. M. (1970) “R. H. Tawney’s early political thought.” Past and Present, no. 47: 71–96.Google Scholar
Wright, Chester (1941) Economic History of the United States. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Wright, Chester (2005 [1933]) “Materials from Chester Whitney Wright’s course, Economic History of the United States, Economics 220, University of Chicago, 1933–1934,” in Samuels, Warren J. (ed.) Further University of Wisconsin Materials: Further Documents of F. Taylor Ostrander. Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, vol. 23-C. Amsterdam: Elsevier: 272–334.Google Scholar