American Economics: The Character

of the Transformation
Mary S. Morgan and Malcolm Rutherford

One possible interpretation of our volume title, From Interwar Plural-

ism to Postwar Neoclassicism, is to understand interwar pluralism as a
code name for the “old institutionalists,” postwar neoclassicism as full-
fledged general-equilibrium mathematics, and the path between them
as the natural and inexorable victory of mathematics and science over
bumbling historicism. It is not difficult to recognize this account for
what it is: a set of straw men ready to be blown over. Pluralism con-
sisted of more than just institutionalism, and there was nothing prede-
termined about the waning of pluralism and the waxing of neoclassi-
cism. The challenge is to provide a more convincing account. What
exactly was the nature of that pluralism and of the neoclassicism that
apparently replaced it? And by what set of processes did the one turn
into the other? These are complex questions, and the essays in this
volume provide critical components of the answers. They also place
constraints on any overall account, particularly with respect to the

This introductory essay draws directly on the stimulating discussions and papers presented at
the special HOPE conference on the subject of our volume held at Duke University in April
1997 and on the subsequent comments of conference participants in their capacity as refer-
ees for the essays submitted for the volume. Unfortunately, we were unable to include all the
conference papers in this volume, but we thank all the participants for their help and apolo-
gize if we have unwittingly quoted them without acknowledgment. We thank the HOPE edi-
tors for their invitation to edit this special issue and the HOPE office for their help and advice
during the conference and in the preparation of this volume. We thank the Lynde and Harry
Bradley Foundation for its generous support of the conference.

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 2 Mary S. Morgan and Malcolm Rutherford

timing of the transformation. We use this essay to lay out the borders
of such an account and to sketch a general picture of how these com-
ponents fit together in a particular way.1 We are all too aware that we
still lack knowledge of many of the elements we need to understand the
full process of transformation: our account remains speculative and
incomplete.

Pluralism
The first two elements for late-twentieth-century historians to under-
stand are the extent and dimensions of the pluralism within American
economics in the interwar period. One strong indication is provided by
the practical difficulty of characterizing interwar economics or econo-
mists in any convincing way. It is common to think of interwar Ameri-
can economics in terms of institutionalists versus neoclassicals, but
when one probes more closely, the picture becomes much less clear.
Although its roots extend back to the 1880s, institutionalism became
a self-identified movement only in 1918 (Rutherford 1997). In the inter-
war period, institutionalism made strong claims for itself as a school
and succeeded in becoming the most visible, if not the dominant, group
in American economics. The movement cohered not around a tight the-
oretical agenda but around a particular view of science and a conviction
of the inadequacy of the unregulated market. It cannot be said that
institutionalists such as Thorstein Veblen, Wesley C. Mitchell, Walton
H. Hamilton, John R. Commons, J. M. Clark, Rexford Tugwell, and
M. A. Copeland all pursued exactly the same research program or uti-
lized the same techniques of investigation. Institutionalism included
Mitchell’s quantitative methods, Commons’s documentary histories
and interviewing, Hamilton’s case studies of firms and industries, and
Clark’s applied theorizing. Institutionalism consisted of a number of
loosely related research programs, one cluster centering on business
cycles and unemployment, with a reform agenda involving some notion
of overall planning, and another cluster centering on the legal dimen-
sions of markets, with a reform agenda focusing on labor law and busi-
ness regulation. Institutionalism also shaded off into more “orthodox”

1. Landreth and Colander (1997) offer another account of the transformation in their broad
survey paper. Samuels (forthcoming) offers an account, as well as a survey of all the confer-
ence papers and a report of the discussion that followed the presentation of each paper.

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 The Character of the Transformation 3

theory. For example, J. M. Clark never rejected J. B. Clark’s theoretical

contribution but saw himself as attempting to continue his father’s
efforts to develop a dynamic theory. J. M. Clark’s accelerator, Mitchell’s
and Simon Kuznets’s work on national income accounting, and Cope-
land’s flow of funds all became standard tools.
Institutionalism, then, was a broad movement and quite nonexclu-
sive. Institutionalists as a group had no one method to defend and
no one economic theory to peddle. What they did have was a commit-
ment to serious scientific investigation, detailed empirical work (though
with no one method), serious theory building (which eschewed simple
assumptions), and a commitment to understand the importance of eco-
nomic institutions in determining economic outcomes. This last point
relates to the institutionalists’ view that new institutions or methods of
“social control” were required to overcome the economic and social
problems created by the existing market system.
Similarly, it is especially difficult to define “orthodox” or “neoclas-
sical” economics in the interwar context and to provide a grouping of
individuals under these labels. The marginalism of J. B. Clark was
highly influential in America, but most economists of the time, includ-
ing Clark himself, felt that his static theory of competition was only a
starting point for a more complete and dynamic analysis. Austrian and
subjectivist ideas were also important. The more “orthodox” group in
the period from the 1880s up to the First World War was highly diverse
and included Arthur Hadley, Frank Taussig, J. B. Clark, Frank Fetter,
H. J. Davenport, and Edwin Seligman. Most of these individuals con-
tinued to contribute during the interwar period and were joined by oth-
ers, such as Frank Knight, Irving Fisher, Jacob Viner, and Allyn Young.
These individuals had a greater respect for the existing body of eco-
nomic theory and for the market system than the more outspoken of
the institutionalists, but they did not all adopt the same theoretical or
methodological positions; nor did they ignore the shortcomings of the
existing theory or remain unconcerned with advancing its scientific
status. Hadley studied institutions and the problems of the railroads,
Davenport combined Austrian and Veblenian influences, and Young
brought to his theorizing, and to that of his students, an institutionalist
sensibility concerning the need for greater realism. Adopting a more
“orthodox” theoretical position also did not necessarily imply a lack of
commitment to reform or a rejection of advocacy. Fisher is only one of
many examples of this, and it is worth noting that Fisher and Commons

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 4 Mary S. Morgan and Malcolm Rutherford

could profess mutual respect for each other and join forces in the
Stable Money League. However, the nature of scientific economics, the
nature of the reforms indicated, and the place of advocacy were all
actively contested. The profession as a whole was very much in the
process of defining itself and its social roles.
As we have said, pluralism is not to be understood as a code word for
“institutionalism.” It was a genuine pluralism, to be taken in a positive
sense. Pluralism meant variety, and that variety was evident in beliefs,
in ideology, in methods, and in policy advice. We are used to thinking
about the institutionalists as difficult to pin down because of their var-
ied interests and practical approaches. But variety appears to be true in
general, for there are no clean lines separating schools; indeed, it is not
even clear that one can specify schools. And it is no easier to provide
simple, accurate labels for many other economists active in the inter-
war period. Economists felt at liberty to pursue their own individual
combinations of ideas. Pluralism, as Warren Samuels remarked at
our conference, describes not only the difference between individuals;
pluralism was in each economist. Coats (1992), in a wide-ranging sur-
vey of the period, suggests that the most “influential” economist of
the period was Mitchell, an institutionalist renowned for quantita-
tive analysis, whereas the most “representative” economist was J. M.
Clark, who bridged the divide between institutionalist and neoclassical
thinking. Clearly, then, in the interwar period it was possible to hold a
number of different economic beliefs and to do economics in many dif-
ferent ways without being out of place or necessarily forfeiting the
respect of one’s peers. The major institutionalists and noninstitutional-
ists alike published in the major journals, held professorships at leading
universities, and became presidents of the American Economic Asso-
ciation (AEA).
This variety, along with a certain tolerance, was a feature not only of
the interwar period, but also, as Bradley W. Bateman shows in this vol-
ume, of the period before the First World War. Admittedly, the origi-
nal AEA statement of principles had excluded a number of “old school”
economists, but the association dropped its statement to effect a con-
ciliation and become a more catholic organization. It is worth noting
that this was done out of a feeling of strength and that the laissez-faire
economists were a small and fading minority. This was a time when a
very wide range of economists, from marginalist to historical, shared
a commitment to economic justice. This commitment was supported by

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 The Character of the Transformation 5

the population at large, as evidenced by the manifesto known as the

“Social Creed” that the Protestant churches adopted before the war, as
we learn from Bateman’s essay. An extraordinary document, the man-
ifesto called for economic regulation and intervention, along with high
wages, to ensure the economic well-being of the American population.
Rather than a social creed, it was an economic creed and a call for
action fully in keeping with the Progressives’ program. The creed pro-
vided neither a set of theoretical economic beliefs nor methods of eco-
nomics but a concrete statement of faith in economic intervention and a
set of specific economic aims.
But although the collapse of the Social Gospel movement and the
consequent loss of impetus behind the Social Creed undermined that
faith and left a vacuum in terms of ideology and policy action, the
underlying plurality of economic approaches was unaffected. Econom-
ics carried its pluralistic beliefs and methods into the interwar period.
When the Great Depression brought an urgent call for economic action,
that plurality blossomed into a variety of analyses of, and possible solu-
tions to, the problems. Proposals for intervention or “planning” of many
different types became the fashion of the 1930s. As economic histori-
ans have long recognized, no one set of consistent economic policies
made up the New Deal; even within each agency, economic aims were
often at odds with each other. This reflected the variety of “planning”
approaches held by the individuals concerned, as Márcia L. Balisciano
documents in this volume. Although seen as a considerable failure both
at the time and in most modern accounts, the New Deal made “the
economy” an important responsibility for all subsequent American
governments. The associated creation of demand for economic advice
from the political sphere and its continuation through the period are
important parts of our story of transformation, and we shall return to
them later in this essay.

The Changing Standards

of Scientific Economics
Understanding the pluralism of the interwar period in terms of the con-
cept of variety does not necessarily give us any grip on the process of
transformation. In order not to prejudge exactly what the outcome
might be, let us start with a very broad characterization of the changes
in American economics during the period by considering changes in

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 6 Mary S. Morgan and Malcolm Rutherford

what it meant to be “scientific.” It seems that in the 1920s many differ-

ent kinds of economists considered themselves “scientists.” From our
current perspective, the mantle was broad: An economist was an inves-
tigative scientist whether he or she used the methods of history, statis-
tics, theoretical deduction, empiricism, mathematics, or whatever. There
was no hegemony of method: Whatever method might be appropriate
for a particular investigation, or favored by a particular economist, might
be adopted. This does not mean that all these methods were equally
popular, as Roger E. Backhouse reminds us in his essay in this volume,
for neither statistics nor mathematics was a popular method during the
period. Nor does it mean that the label “scientific” was uncontested
with respect to methods. On the contrary, it was hotly contested.
Among institutionalists, the concept of science seems to have been
based on a view of natural science methods as empirical and experi-
mental. Mitchell’s quantitative approach was quite explicitly modeled
on what he thought of as the nearest approach to the methods of the
natural scientist that it was possible to achieve in economics. But other
institutionalists did not place the same emphasis on quantitative meth-
ods as did Mitchell; Tugwell talked of experimental economics, and
Copeland talked of the natural science point of view. Although the spe-
cific techniques of investigation used by institutionalists varied, in all
cases the goal was to investigate actual conditions and to create a the-
ory that was based on realistic assumptions and that could address real-
world issues and problems. Institutionalists contrasted these methods
with what they saw as the overly abstract nature of much of the stan-
dard theory as it then existed. This is not to say that most, or even very
many, of the more orthodox economists were pure theorists but to sug-
gest that their theories of rational behavior and competitive markets
were seen by institutionalists as relying on highly simplified and unre-
alistic assumptions that limited their applicability and usefulness in
solving real-world problems.
Institutionalist claims concerning the nature of scientific investiga-
tion appropriate in economics echoed similar arguments being made in
other social sciences, and such ideas impacted on the economics pro-
fession even beyond the institutionalists’ own ranks. One result of this
was the highly concrete and problem-oriented nature of the vast bulk of
work in economics, whether conducted by institutionalists or not. It
was in this period that the specialist areas of labor economics and
industrial organization developed, and much of the work in these areas

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 The Character of the Transformation 7

was of a highly empirical and concrete nature. Differentiating the insti-

tutionalist from the noninstitutionalist on the basis of the work produced
in these areas is often extremely difficult. Even in the more theoretical
areas of the discipline, the effect can be seen in the development of
more “realistic” theories of imperfect competition, market failures, and
business cycles. Of course, the institutionalist conception of a scientific
economics was not simply conceded by all economists, and counterar-
guments were made, appearing more frequently in the late 1930s and
1940s. Individuals with more orthodox theoretical predilections, such
as Knight, launched something of a counterattack, arguing that natural
science methods could not simply be brought into economics without
modification and that natural science was more theoretical and abstract
than was being contended (Rutherford 1997). Their success was slow in
coming, but particularly after the Second World War, their notions of
science were reinforced by other factors impacting on the discipline,
as discussed later. Ross B. Emmett’s essay in this volume outlines
the changes in the nature of the University of Chicago’s economics
curriculum from the 1930s to the 1950s, which reflected a growing
emphasis on neoclassical theory and a move from problem-oriented to
methods-oriented field courses that stressed the application of “core”
theoretical and statistical methods.
Although interwar pluralism was characterized by arguments over
what constituted the correct set of scientific methods for economics,
this does not mean that there were no shared scientific standards.
Indeed, economists must have held some shared standards that allowed
them to argue over matters of method and yet share the same platforms
and contribute to the same journals. Looking back from today, we gain
a sense that several kinds of standards were operating across interwar
pluralism. First, it is revealing that today’s natural categories of eco-
nomic science, “theoretical” and “applied,” simply do not fit well in this
earlier period, as Backhouse points out. The fact that economists from
the late nineteenth century through the interwar period wanted to find
out about the world with a scientific spirit did not mean that they used
one single method of approach. But it did mean that most economics
was expressed in concrete rather than abstract terms, whether the topic
was one of specific or of general import.
Second, the scientific status of the work was associated more with
the personal qualities and attitudes of the economist qua scientist than
with any particular method used. This is consistent with several recent

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 8 Mary S. Morgan and Malcolm Rutherford

history-of-science accounts suggesting that, at various times and

places, personal factors have been particularly important in establish-
ing claims to scientific objectivity. Daston (1995) has described this
kind of objectivity as dependent upon a “moral economy”: a set of per-
sonal virtues or values of scientific inquiry (honesty, integrity, etc.).
Respect for these qualities and values seems to have been shared by all
economists, be they working in academia, in government (such as the
Bureau of Agricultural Economics), or in the new privately funded
institutes of economic research (such as the National Bureau of Eco-
nomic Research [NBER]).
Third, economists’ integrity and commitment to a spirit of scientific
investigation did not necessarily mean they pursued a value-free or pol-
icy-free scientific agenda. Both in the period before the First World
War and in the interwar period, economists could characterize them-
selves as being scientific in their approach to their material while hold-
ing strong values and views concerning the aims of economics via eco-
nomic policy. Furner (1975), in her wonderful account of American
economics during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
associates objectivity with evenhandedness. It became the professional
ethos of economists of the period to teach both sides of a case: both free
trade and protectionism; gold standard and bimetallism; labor unions
and capitalism. Professionalization demanded evenhandedness. But
this very demand recognizes the existence of different analyses, with
different results, resting on different beliefs and values. Evenhanded-
ness meant acknowledging differences of opinion, but it also meant
impartially rejecting sectionalism in favor of the promotion of the
social interest. The social interest, of course, could be variously defined,
and different economists could hold different policy positions. So even-
handedness did not necessarily imply silence or neutrality on available
policy options, and many economists argued strongly for particular
reform packages. The economist could be an advocate in the policy
domain, but only if his or her views were buttressed by a properly
objective scientific inquiry.
Economists of the early twentieth century shared a kind of scientific
economics (more often concrete than abstract), a moral commitment to
ensure standards of scientific inquiry, and an evenhanded objectivity
combined with advocacy. Pluralism was supported, not compromised,
by these standards. How do these characteristics contrast with the
kinds of scientific standards and objectivity we associate with postwar

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 The Character of the Transformation 9

neoclassicism? Modern neoclassical economics takes for granted objec-

tivity at the level of investigation, but what is striking is that now
objectivity is thought to extend to the level of beliefs and to policy
advice. Two transforming processes brought about this shift.
In the first process, the notion of objectivity associated with a set of
personal attributes that guaranteed the standards of scientific econom-
ics gave way to a notion of objectivity vested in a particular set of meth-
ods, namely, mathematics and statistics. These were methods that
could be pronounced unambiguously scientific on the grounds that they
had to be used in a technical, i.e., nonsubjective, way. The late-nine-
teenth-century development of statistical methods has been portrayed
as ensuring the “objective” treatment of economic data (see Gigerenzer
et al. 1989), while the parallel development of mathematical methods
in economics carried an equivalent “objective” label for theoretical
analysis. These technical treatments of both inductive and deductive
arguments, and of ways of dealing with evidence, provided economists
with an apparent neutrality. Economists who could rely on such tech-
nical methods no longer had to be so scrupulously evenhanded or to
depend so entirely on their virtues. These technical approaches created
a new kind of professional expertise that enabled economists to offer
“objective” policy advice, for they could argue that the objectivity of
their methods warranted the objectivity of the results of the analysis
and of the associated policy advice. Porter (1995) has described, in con-
vincing detail, the American development of cost-benefit analysis dur-
ing this period of transformation to show how the turn to technical
expertise (rules of calculation, mathematical formulas, and statistical
data) provided economists with a defense of their analysis against
attacks by those promoting political agendas or those with strong oppos-
ing values.
These “objective methods” were slow to catch on in American eco-
nomics, with agricultural economics, the statistical analysis of Mitchell
and the NBER, and the emerging econometrics (including the Cowles
Commission) probably being the strongest areas between the wars. But
the development of technical expertise, wherein scientific credibility
depends on methods, was a necessary prerequisite for the application by
economists of simple mathematically and statistically based problem-
solving techniques in various government departments during the Sec-
ond World War, as discussed in Craufurd D. Goodwin’s essay in this
volume.

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 10 Mary S. Morgan and Malcolm Rutherford

Of course, the claim to “objective” methods works only when differ-

ent economists using similar methods produce the same answers. When
they don’t, the economists’ whole claim to scientific objectivity is dou-
bly undercut. So disagreement over how to measure and what to count
among economists working on cost-benefit analyses for different arms
of the government meant, in Porter’s case, that technical expertise
could not force closure in the policy debate. But the very fact that tech-
nical methods are debated so vehemently speaks to their importance to
modern notions of scientific economics. Disagreement over what con-
stituted the correct set of statistical methods was one element in the
famous “measurement without theory” debate between the NBER and
the Cowles Commission that epitomized the divide between institu-
tionalists’ and neoclassicals’ use of alternative types of statistical meth-
ods in the late 1940s.
The second and equally important transforming process was the
growing faith in the “market solution” and the virtues of free competi-
tion. As we see in Bateman’s and Anne Mayhew’s essays in this vol-
ume, these beliefs cannot be taken for granted as part of the American
tradition. Rather, such beliefs were not generally held by American
economists of the late nineteenth century. They might have been pre-
cipitated by the perceived failures of economic intervention in the New
Deal. But it was only in the postwar period that economists began to
see and portray the free market, perfect competition, and individual
economic rights as, in themselves, embodying objective, value-free
truths for reasons we shall discuss later. Thus the primacy of economic
efficiency as the guiding value and the possibility of separating eco-
nomic values from other considerations were both postwar develop-
ments among American economists, according to Steven G. Medema’s
discussion in this volume in the context of the relationship of law and
economics. By contrast, the old idea, dominant in the pre–First World
War period and holding into the interwar period, was that there is a
necessary interrelation, indeed interdetermination, of legal and eco-
nomic institutions. Institutions embody economic values, and values,
by definition, cannot be value-free.
It may help to stress what we are not arguing here. The fact that the
ethical commitments of the pre–First World War period went out of
fashion (because of the failure of their supporting ideology) does not
mean that a “value-free” and technical neoclassical economics would
necessarily fill the vacuum. Modern neoclassical economics was not

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 The Character of the Transformation 11

the only possible response. The loosening of the ethical ideology

allowed the commitment to self-interest freer rein. This could have
meant a retreat to classical laissez-faire economics, also presented as
value-free by its proponents but no more technical than nineteenth-cen-
tury historical economics. Yet the original AEA statement of principles
had been formulated exactly to exclude the old-style classical econo-
mists such as William G. Sumner. That option was ruled out. Another
possible outcome of these changing standards might have been a move
to statistical empirical economics, one way for our two processes imply-
ing a more technical and value-free economics to link up. Indeed, such
a picture fits Mitchell and NBER economics at least up to the 1950s.
Neoclassical economics was not the only viable option, and it took
some time to catch on.
What does emerge from the two processes we have described is that,
in the postwar era, economists increasingly adopted methods that car-
ried the warrant of objectivity to the results of their analysis and to
their policy advice. At the same time, they learned to present certain
economic beliefs as value-free and therefore objective. For reasons that
will become clearer, the professional ethos of economics changed. In
this new ethos of economics, it became the fashion to offer consensus
advice, in strong contrast to the contrary advice economists offered in
the New Deal. The economist became the neutral, professional scien-
tist, offering expert, value-free advice in a language the public could
understand. At the same time, internal professional disputes began to be
expressed in a separate technical language.

Economists and the Economy

Since it is widely thought that the mathematical method and neoclas-
sical beliefs are inseparable, it might be taken as natural that changes
toward quantitative tools and neoclassical beliefs occurred together.
These two changes may have been concurrent, and possibly they were
driven by the same causal factors, but the essays in this volume suggest
that the causal factors operated in different ways.
One factor we have already discussed is the economic historical con-
text. The Great Depression, the key event of the period from 1920 to
1960, demanded that economists take up the challenge of diagnosing
and treating the illness in the economy. It is difficult to imagine an
economy in which output fell by 25 – 30 percent and in which unem-

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 12 Mary S. Morgan and Malcolm Rutherford

ployment reached a level of 25 percent and did not return to its 1929
level until 1942 (despite the demand stimulus from wartime allies).
Even the most laissez-faire economists would have doubts about the
efficacy of the market solution. But this was not the only depression of
the interwar period. A very sudden and severe depression occurred in
1921 – 22. And during the war years, most economists were convinced
that after the war ended, the economy would return to the 1930s
depression or else would fall into a sudden slump, as after the First
World War. In wartime itself, of course, the economy required consid-
erable planning. In these circumstances, it comes as less of a surprise to
find that, on the whole, economists remained pro-interventionist into
the 1940s.
These historical problems in the economy not only turned econo-
mists toward intervention but also created the demand for their services
to make concrete plans and suggestions for which the new technical
tools of simple mathematical models and statistical techniques were
well adapted. It was not that the old tools could not provide answers or
that they were not technical tools. Economists were accustomed to pro-
viding specific answers to concrete questions. Railroad regulation had
long depended on economic analysis of rates, and agricultural econo-
mists were used to measuring and manipulating the agricultural sector.
It was not even that the Great Depression was immediately regarded as
something different, requiring new solutions. The problem was seen as
massive but not new. It was only in the New Deal that the demand for
economic solutions widened: Every aspect of the economy became
open to economic attack. American economists of every stripe responded.
Charles Roos, one of the active econometricians in the early years of
the Cowles Commission, became chief research economist at the
National Recovery Administration (NRA), building mathematical and
statistical models of industrial competition. Mordecai Ezekiel, agri-
cultural econometrician, and Tugwell, institutionalist, both became
involved in general planning. But by and large, economists did not find
the New Deal a successful experience; it did not improve their reputa-
tions. And to the extent that institutional economists were involved in
these schemes, they, along with the other economists, shared in the
failure.
Only in the war years, and only after the United States entered the
war, did the economy regain its old strength. The war, as Goodwin’s
essay discusses, was a watershed in several ways. Economists not only

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 The Character of the Transformation 13

found their technical expertise useful in making decisions about how to

deal with economic shortages (rather than oversupply as in the Great
Depression) but also turned their techniques to any number of wartime
questions, using simple mathematical optimizing models, linear pro-
gramming techniques, and statistical measurement devices. Econo-
mists were brought in to fight the war directly, planning the optimum
bombing-raid design and statistically analyzing firing patterns. Econ-
omists found that by using tool-kit economics and the developing
neoclassical technical expertise they could answer questions in very
different fields. Economics emerged from the war covered in glory, per-
haps launching the “economic imperialism” in social sciences over the
last half century.
In the postwar world, as Goodwin shows, the nascent neoclassical
technologies continued to prove useful, but note that this was tool-kit
neoclassical economics, formulated to answer clearly specified, well-
defined questions, not grand general-equilibrium theorizing. Advice
remained at the level of basic microeconomics, both during and after
the war, and may not have been very different from the earlier advice
offered by economists at the Bureau of Agricultural Economics or in
the New Deal administrations. This was the economics of Hadley (the
American Marshall) rather than the sophisticated neoclassicism of Paul
Samuelson. Thus, although for this new generation the concrete kinds
of questions investigated and answered might have been no different
from those investigated by earlier economists, the methods had become
more technically oriented and the role of the economist had changed.
He (mostly) offered answers but without the accompanying advocacy
of the earlier period. These answers were naturally “correct” because
they were the result of “objective” methods and because by that stage
economists were beginning to spurn intervention and to turn to their
new love: the belief of neoclassical economics in the market, in com-
petition, and in the primacy of the self-interested individual.
The timing of this change is something of a puzzle. Why did econo-
mists fall fully in love with the market and out of love with control and
intervention just as they became successful at practicing the latter in
response to the events of economic and political history? It might be a
question of selection: The new sort of economics expertise provided by
neoclassical tool-kit methods of analysis was best adapted to the
demands created by this set of events. According to such an argument,
it is because of the success of their tools that economists came to

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 14 Mary S. Morgan and Malcolm Rutherford

believe in the ideas behind them. This is certainly an interesting rever-

sal of the normal internalist history of economics that portrays ideas
(“thought”) as the leading light in any account. This reversed argument
is also consistent with the claim usually made for Britain that the suc-
cess of Keynesian tools and concepts used in running the war economy
encouraged economists’, and politicians’, belief in that system of ideas
and led to its popularity in the postwar period. The wartime experience
of active tool-based intervention is an important causal factor in the
transformation, but it is only part of the story.

Economists, War, and Society

It might seem perfectly reasonable that a society tired of war and
depression and delighted with the postwar boom should react by
embracing the goals of free markets and healthy competition. These
views might well take time to emerge, given the still vivid memories of
the Great Depression, and might take equally long to become fixed in
the minds of economists. A more cogent claim, and one which surfaces
in a number of the papers, relates to the cold war, a war, Goodwin
reminds us, of economic ideologies. This explanatory factor has the
virtue of fitting our timing puzzle, for at just the right point, American
society moved solidly in favor of the virtues of free markets and open
competition. In so doing, it reinforced, at a critical point just after the
war, the neoclassical belief system. We find this argument more cogent
because in this case the “reasonable” argument of reaction implies that
European societies, more borne down by wartime economic controls,
would embrace the free market more enthusiastically than the United
States, but they did not. In addition, the cold war was not nearly as
frozen in Europe, where reconstruction planning and welfare statism
evolved into the mixed economy and the effect on social scientists’
ideas was less dramatic.
The moment at which society’s values line up with those of econo-
mists is a point to watch. Just before the First World War, the Social
Creed was accepted by the mainstream Protestant churches, society
lined up behind the economics of the AEA founding generation, and its
program seemed ready to be put into practice. As Bateman tells us, the
Social Gospel movement provided economists with a language and an
opportunity to talk to the wider community and supported a pluralism
of economics under the ethical umbrella. The moment was temporar-

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 The Character of the Transformation 15

ily lost because of the nationalist turn taken by the churches in response
to the First World War. Not until the New Deal did economists again
have an opportunity to talk with conviction, and a similar plurality
occurred then because the ideas and approaches were those of the pre-
1920 period, brought forward partly by a new generation. It is one of
the ironies of our tale that just as something close to the Social Creed
of the churches became politically well supported and official economic
policy at the end of the Second World War, a new form of nationalism
appeared. (A comparison of the episodes revealed in Bateman’s and
Balisciano’s essays is instructive.) At this second moment, the nation-
alism of the cold war pushed society’s commitment to economic free-
dom well ahead of that of the main body of American economists. In
the climate of those times economists found it safer to conform, and the
developing neoclassical economics, which incorporated similar values,
was given a big boost.
The effects of McCarthyism surely cannot be ignored in any account
of the transformation of American economics. Although we have
records of émigré economists who arrived in America to escape fas-
cism in the 1930s (see Hagemann and Krohn 1991, Craver 1986), we
have little more than anecdotes of economists who left America to
avoid anticommunist persecution. Some of these, of course, held views
that might be communist, or prosocialist, but even Keynesianism was
a suspect heterodoxy, and those who had espoused planning for the
postwar economy a few years before, let alone staunch New Dealers,
might well have found themselves outcasts. Some of these economists
returned, others did not, but their absence was certainly one of the fac-
tors that made for a narrowing from the earlier pluralism of American
economics in the postwar period.
The result of these pressures on those who remained was both to
narrow the range of beliefs and to restrict the acceptable ways of
expressing them. Goodwin’s essay suggests that this narrowing was
achieved partly through a turn toward greater technicality and toward
the apparently “neutral” languages of mathematics. As we have noted,
this post – Second World War technical defense by itself does not nec-
essarily imply neoclassical economics. Although Keynesianism might
have been thought dangerously close to Marxism, an IS/LM diagram
probably looked innocuous to an outsider, and statistical numbers such
as those of Mitchell had long held their own neutral status as “data.”
Economics expressed in geometry, algebra, or numbers could be a good

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 16 Mary S. Morgan and Malcolm Rutherford

self-defense in the cold war days and pass muster in the classroom as
well as in the government. Indeed, in our more general framework, this
move to technical methods was precisely the move that Porter (1995)
suggests made economics defensible against democratic power, who-
ever wielded it on whichever side. The cold war enforced, if it did not
create, the trend toward economists offering professionally neutral,
objective expertise, which contrasted strongly with the ethical, and
strongly held, advocacy of the late-nineteenth-century professional
economist. Even in their “evenhanded” mode, public statements of the
late nineteenth century offered considerable political ammunition com-
pared to the expert jargon and tool-kit style of postwar economics,
which could be used to disguise theoretical content and ideology to the
outside world.
Although this move to mathematics was partly a self-imposed defense
undertaken by individuals (see Johnson 1977), it was also encouraged by
academic institutions seeking “safe” teachers and research institutes
seeking “acceptable” researchers. As Goodwin’s essay suggests, patrons
of economic research exacted an obligation of political correctness in
line with the cold war that had the effect of narrowing the views that
could be expressed and count within the mainstreams of economics, be
they academic or governmental. There is some suggestion that patrons
and economists colluded in hiding radical ideas from the public, for
institutions, as much as individuals, sought safety in the climate of
political repression. Elsewhere there was open warfare. One of the few
case studies of the academic effects of the cold war, by Solberg and
Tomilson (1997), describes events in the Economics Department at the
University of Illinois. There, “academic McCarthyism” drove out both
nascent Keynesians and those advocating modern tool-based econom-
ics, a combination that included Margaret Reid, Leonid Hurwicz,
Dorothy Brady, Robert Eisner, Don Patinkin, and finally Franco
Modigliani. Regardless of the process, the effect was the same: Both
open persecution and closet correctness led to the narrowing of per-
missible economic opinion.
The retreat was not total, for although being a follower of Keynes
was a dubious label for American economists in the 1950s, Keynesian-
ism could be made compatible with market economics in the American
environment. This was accomplished both by persuading businesspeo-
ple that they could do better under a government that took the macro-
economy seriously (as Balisciano suggests) and by translating Keynes-

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 The Character of the Transformation 17

ianism into the same technical form as neoclassical economics, the

first step to the American “neoclassical-Keynesian synthesis.” In a
similar way, old-fashioned institutionalist monetarism was made com-
patible with American academic neoclassicism, as Perry Mehrling
recounts in this volume. Economists could safely argue about the same
old things, but their debate had become an insiders’ technical argument,
not one open to the public gaze. The public debates of the 1930s became
internal technical disputes in the 1950s and 1960s.
It is clearly difficult, without a lot more research, to assess the impact
of McCarthyism on the transformation of American economics. Yet the
counterfactual question “What would have been the history of Ameri-
can economics without the cold war?” indicates the potential answers
to our puzzles about timing and about the degree of belief in the effi-
cacy of the market. Remember, the puzzle is that although the institu-
tionalists were strongly evident as a grouping within the general plu-
ralism of the 1930s (but failed to strike the advantage offered by this
position to coalesce around a single program), the neoclassical group-
ing did not really become evident until the 1950s (see Rutherford
1997). The relatively sudden shift from the institutionalist (indeed gen-
eral) belief in government intervention to the more neoclassical belief
in the free market can be explained when we consider seriously Amer-
ican society’s views in the cold war. The reinforcement of the techni-
cal turn in economics (and not just in neoclassical economics) emerges
as an important, although clearly unintended, consequence of the same
causal factor, namely, the political climate.
Thus a transformation to a tool-kit version of economics in general,
and to the beliefs of neoclassical economics in particular (which was
only one of many strands in the interwar period), was reinforced and
given impetus by the social values of the time, so that by 1960 Ameri-
can neoclassicism was well established. The extent to which these
moves are evident in the journals gives us some backing for our
account. Backhouse’s essay suggests that formally expressed econom-
ics was on the increase beginning in the 1930s, but the real change
came after 1945. Empirical econometrics developed a little later, with
the real change occurring after 1950. Thus once again, the war was
a watershed: After this time we see both modern style and modern
research categories beginning to emerge in considerable strength, con-
current with the move by economists to a self-defensive technocratic
approach.

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 18 Mary S. Morgan and Malcolm Rutherford

The New Style and Its Implications

Those who find modern neoclassical economics unconnected to the
real-world economy are apt to blame increasing formalism in some
form or other for this state of affairs and to blame the profession for
this move. But instead, as we have argued, formalism should first be
seen as the outcome of various external contingencies, not the cause of
internal ones. We have already discussed how the demand for econo-
mists to solve policy problems led to the increasing use of technical
tools both in the Great Depression and, more particularly, in the war.
We described this as tool-kit economics rather than neoclassical eco-
nomics, for it is important to remember that not all tools were associated
with neoclassical economics; not all econometricians were neoclassical
economists; and planning of whatever type demanded numbers and sta-
tistical work on a large scale. We have also discussed the way in which
this technical turn was strongly reinforced by economists’ and patrons’
need for self-defense during the cold war. Here it was not so much what
the technical tools would do for you but rather that the language of
mathematics and statistics appeared to be more neutral and objective,
and more difficult for the layperson and politician, leaving the econo-
mists less open to outside attacks about matters of belief. Formalism
therefore offered economists both tools for practical usage and neutral
language for expression and for safe professional argument.
But there are second-round and more subtle effects of these changes
which are perhaps best understood through the case study that Mehr-
ling gives us, and this is why formalism does indeed bear some of the
blame for the waning of pluralism. In his account of disputes within
monetary economics, Mehrling argues that the joint adoption of neo-
classical beliefs and mathematical expression created a kind of mone-
tary Walrasianism within which monetary arguments became no longer
matters of belief, or even of empirical evidence, but technical matters of
modeling. We can understand from this example just how the changes
in language and the form in which economics was expressed narrowed
down what could be said and flattened what could be questioned. The
real underlying arguments about money might remain, but they could
no longer be expressed fully and explicitly within the new sort of for-
malized economics. This process worked by integrating awkward
empirical findings or theories from the other types of economics into
the formal framework of neoclassical explanations. This is one way to

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 The Character of the Transformation 19

interpret the fate of Gardiner Means’s administered-pricing thesis, dis-

cussed by Lee (1997), and the developments in cost theory discussed by
Naples and Aslanbeigui (1997). In all these examples, the transforma-
tion into formal economics involved changes in language, form, and
tools. This new style became a set of mores that reduced in itself the
possibility of pluralism within economics.
Another connected contextual factor needs to be brought in: the role
of mathematics in economics. In providing the intellectual context for
the work of the early mathematical economist G. C. Evans, E. Roy
Weintraub’s essay in this volume discusses the changing relationship
between mathematics and science. This early proponent of mathemat-
ical economics, along with many of those committed to the economet-
rics movement in the interwar period, believed that successfully using
mathematics meant hooking it onto the economic world, a view current
in the sciences in the late nineteenth century. By the mid–twentieth
century, economists were more likely to be enthralled by a turn in
mathematics itself that viewed mathematics as a way of writing down
consistent theories. Mathematics became the language for the expres-
sion of abstract and general theory rather than a tool for uncovering
and writing down true descriptions of the economic world. Thus at
around the time the main body of American economists began to pre-
fer the language of mathematics on defensive ground, the scientific role
of mathematics was itself coming free of its connections to the scien-
tific (economic) world.
If early mathematical economists in general shared Evans’s views,
then the shift in the perceptions about mathematics in science helps
explain both the formation and the collapse of the econometric move-
ment, conceived in the interwar period as the integration of mathemat-
ics and statistics into economics. If mathematical descriptions must
hook onto the world, they need to link the observable or measurable to
the hypothetical. Around 1950 this dream of the econometric tradition
that mathematical economic theory had to match something observable
(even if not actual statistical data) collapsed, and econometrics split
into mathematical economics and econometrics as we now know it. It is
pertinent that another element of the late 1940s “measurement without
theory” debate between institutionalists and neoclassicals focused on
the correct role of mathematics in economics. Under the older com-
mitment to a mathematics that hooks rigorously onto the world, it would
not have been so easy for the neoclassicals to use mathematics to con-

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 20 Mary S. Morgan and Malcolm Rutherford

solidate their position against the institutionalists, for as Mehrling

suggested (during discussions of Weintraub’s essay), American institu-
tionalism shared some of the methodological prejudices of the nineteenth-
century math. The more recent tradition of twentieth-century mathe-
matics fits better with the prejudices of neoclassical theory, and so the
shift in the role of mathematics in relation to economics tended to sup-
port the emergent neoclassical hegemony. The waning of institutional-
ism and the rise of neoclassical economics were shaped by the evolu-
tion of mathematics in relation to the sciences.
We have used the term “style” to describe the differences implied in
American economics as it emerged through the cold war world of the
1950s and 1960s. Our term style involves, first of all, a language, one
that narrowed what could be said, a language not so closely connected
to the world or easily accessible except to professional economists and
their students. The term could be extended to the idea of a “laboratory
economics” (at Bateman’s suggestion) in which the tools of mathemat-
ical modeling and statistical econometrics, though no longer fully inte-
grated, could be rejoined in an alliance more tenuously connected to
the world. (Here we should note that the term “lab” was also used as a
label for the professional-level “applied-theory” training that the Uni-
versity of Chicago developed at this time.) These changes are epito-
mized in the development of consumer theory, described in this volume
by Philip Mirowski and D. Wade Hands. Here we have something like
the archetypical neoclassical American economics, concerned with
formal puzzles created by the use of mathematical representations,
using mathematics to express worries and venturing, but not too far,
into statistical data. Within this, technical disagreement was expressed
in professional-level debate: the pluralism of neoclassical economics.
Yet nothing hangs directly on the argument — no income subsidy will
be granted or abolished, although maybe someone will get a grant to do
further research!
But the notion of style involves more than language and forms, for
the laboratory ideal was also a practical one with practical tools.
Indeed, the institutionalist tradition lives on in American applied eco-
nomics, which has a reputation for care and thoroughness in its empir-
ical inquiries. Weintraub’s notions of the two roles of mathematics
might also, he suggests, be seen as underlying our modern labels of the-
oretical versus applied economics, categories that become cogent in
Backhouse’s survey only in the postwar period. Thus in sorting out

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 The Character of the Transformation 21

style from blanket descriptions of neoclassicism versus pluralism, we

would do well to remind ourselves once again that this is not a history
of thought but a history of a discipline, with people and institutions
offering services and other people and institutions demanding those
services. Patrons wanted economists to be able to solve real problems
(not mathematical puzzles, high theory, or historical themes) in a pro-
fessional (i.e., expert) style. They wanted usable economic science, not
something esoteric, whether it was called neoclassicism or Keynesian-
ism. This makes the outcome something more than a change of lan-
guage and the adoption of certain forms and tools, something more
akin to a change of approach or style.
The economics that emerged was one in which economists learned to
cut up the problem into something small enough that it could be solved
but still realistic enough that people could relate to it. The style change
involved no great new methodological or theoretical commitment, yet
it was an important part of the changing face of American economics
during the period. And although such a change in approach did not nec-
essarily require any initial changes in beliefs, it did have implications
for beliefs in the long run. As Mehrling describes, an initial continuity
of ideas may, through a change in methods of expression, gradually
bring about changes in content and beliefs.

The Waning of Institutionalism

Our concentration on the importance of the contexts of economic,
political, and scientific history has mostly focused on why formal and
neoclassical economics found themselves strengthened by the course
of events, but much of what has been said also touches on the relative
decline of institutionalism. It is worth pulling together some of the
strands of this story as it applies to institutionalism, particularly as a
number of the essays in this collection provide insight into the detail of
the processes involved.
As Goodwin shows, the decline of institutionalism was not rapid, and
even as late as 1948 economics was still pluralistic, offering abstract the-
ory, high empiricism, and institutional studies. Nevertheless, in general
terms, the same factors that gradually strengthened neoclassicism had
an opposite effect on institutionalism, so that institutional economics,
so important in the interwar period, began to wane as neoclassical eco-
nomics strengthened. This, however, is very much an overall view, and

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 22 Mary S. Morgan and Malcolm Rutherford

we should remind ourselves of the diversity within institutionalism.

Different parts of the movement were impacted in different ways and
at different times.
The changing concepts of science and of scientific objectivity are
cases in point. In the interwar period, the NBER showed a nice combi-
nation of the two notions of objectivity discussed previously. Objectiv-
ity as evenhandedness and as recognition of differences of opinion can
be seen in the NBER’s appointing directors who represented different
points of view and different constituencies. Objectivity as technique is
embodied in the quantitative methods designed to establish facts impar-
tially and in Mitchell’s determination to keep a clear separation between
scientific fact-finding and the use of facts in policy advocacy. Mitchell’s
desire to separate science from advocacy was not shared by other insti-
tutionalists, and the difference between Mitchell and other institution-
alists on this matter may explain the ability of Mitchell’s program at the
NBER to sustain its relatively high standing for as long as it did. By way
of contrast, Hamilton suffered attacks for his proposals for the coal
industry, which may have affected his standing at the Brookings Grad-
uate School (Ross 1991, 417), and throughout his career, Commons was
at the center of political controversy. Such a professional stance was
exactly what Goodwin suggests would have been at odds with the new
scientific style increasingly demanded by funding agencies and other
consumers of economic analysis in the postwar period.
Other aspects of the fate of the Wisconsin school of institutionalism
and of the “old” style of law and economics are examined in this vol-
ume by Jeff Biddle and by Medema. Biddle examines the hypothesis
that University of Wisconsin graduates went into government in larger
numbers than the graduates of more orthodox schools, so that Wisconsin-
style institutionalism failed to reproduce itself within the academic
world. This might have been a reflection of the ideological slant and
particular training provided by Commons and others at Wisconsin. Bid-
dle finds only limited support for his hypothesis, but it is certainly true
that Commons’s students did little to advance his conceptual scheme
involving the legal and economic system and were more attracted
to his work on labor economics and to some of his specific reform
efforts. Commons’s students replicated his more concrete and problem-
oriented kind of work, a type of work that gradually lost ground to tool-
kit economics. In this respect, imagine how hard Commons’s type of
institutionalism in all its complexity was to teach and to learn. It did not

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 The Character of the Transformation 23

look technical (it wasn’t quantitative), but it relied on detailed study,

knowledge of law as well as of economics, an understanding of per-
sonalities and situations, experience in mediation, and personal integ-
rity — a skill set that contrasts rather sharply with that imparted by the
applied-theory workshops developed at the University of Chicago and
described by Emmett.
The Commons-Hamilton type of law and economics, pictured by
Medema as multifaceted, pluralistic with respect to methods, interdis-
ciplinary, and based on a concept of the law and the economy as mutu-
ally determined and determining, was at odds with the changing tem-
per, so that the old type of law and economics was in serious decline
even before the development of the new type of law and economics at
Chicago. The new type of law and economics, with its very different
views on competition, antitrust, and other policy issues, both reflected
and helped advance the ideological move of the profession away from
the reform agenda of institutionalists.
Other sections of the institutionalist movement were damaged by the
experiences of the Great Depression and the New Deal. This is partic-
ularly the case among institutionalists such as Tugwell and Means who
advanced the “structuralist” or proplanning view during the early phase
of the New Deal. As Mayhew and Balisciano make clear, the outcome
of the New Deal experience was not only a move away from structural
planning and to a Keynesian style of macroeconomic policy but also a
move away from a regulatory approach to industry and to a more pro-
competitive stance involving the enforcement of the Sherman and
Clayton acts.
These developments, involving a turn away from planning and reg-
ulation and toward the market and competition as instruments of con-
trol, could only be reinforced by the ideological impact of the cold war.

Conclusion
Implicit in this account of the transformation of American economics is
that the decline of pluralism in American economics was neither a sim-
ple nor an obvious result of the development of neoclassical economics
and vice versa. No logical relation says that this must have been so, nor
does the evidence support such a direct causal story. We have also tried
to avoid basing our account of the transformation on two other polar
positions.

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 24 Mary S. Morgan and Malcolm Rutherford

One is the Whiggish progress account. It is not clear that the evi-
dence can support a history that neoclassicism won out because it
offered better theory and better explanations. To argue that such an out-
come was inevitable, that neoclassical economics offered “better sci-
ence,” clashes with our claim that the changing notions of science and
scientific objectivity were part of the transformatory process. As we
have argued, neoclassical economics grew in dominance as the notion
of science changed and the two developments were connected. This
being the case, there were no stable internal criteria on which to offer
a historical judgment about “progress.”
The other account we have eschewed is the conspiracy theory, in
which neoclassical economists in positions of power ganged up on the
heterodox. Since this view assumes that heterodox science might have
won the battle but for the social power of neoclassical economists, the
account similarly implies that one group has historically measurable
claims to be a “better science.” This is as problematic as before.
Furthermore, both of these polar positions are premised on some
recognizable duality of institutionalist (or heterodox) and neoclassical
groups that we believe cannot be identified in the interwar period. This
is not to deny that one can point out individual institutionalist and neo-
classical economists or that they had differences of opinion but to sug-
gest that it is difficult to make either the progress or the conspiracy the-
ory work, because the pluralism of the interwar period cuts across
individual beliefs. The war was a watershed in which the transforma-
tion process suddenly resolved itself, so that after that time we can sen-
sibly begin to talk in terms of such groups.
Nor do we wish to deny either that there were individual battles or
that institutional power mattered to the outcomes. But such power
plays took place within structures involving patrons and hierarchies
operating within the context of a political and economic society that
supported calls for economic intervention in the interwar period and for
free markets in the postwar period. These wider economic and political
beliefs are never just backgrounds against which individuals (and insti-
tutions) fight science wars; they provide content for the debate and are
integral elements in any power struggle.
In seeking to provide a general account of the transformation in
American economics, we have concentrated on explanatory factors
within which the individual substories could be placed. Our primary

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 The Character of the Transformation 25

aim has been to provide an account of the transformation consistent

with the timing and character of changes suggested in the individual
essays in this volume: They each have their own history to tell, with
separate contingent circumstances. In making one account into which
they all fit with ease, we have concentrated on the contingencies of the
world outside: scientific, political, and economic. These have formed
the basis of our explanations. It was this world that created the cir-
cumstances to which American economists adapted and within which
their economics was transformed.
The story of the transformation is far from closed. Many holes must
be filled, and many parts of our account remain speculative, requiring
substantial historical research to turn them into documented history.
Whatever historical strength lies in our account is drawn from the
essays in this volume; the speculations and errors remain our own.

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