REFLECTIONS ON INSTITUTIONAL AND CHICAGO ECONOMICS

Abstract

I will use Malcolm Rutherford’s paper, “Chicago Economics and Institutionalism,” as the basis for general comments about the historical enterprise of writing and evaluating the history of institutional economics (or institutionalism). In doing so I will take liberties with Rutherford’s paper, some of which he may not approve. The thrust of my comments is to take Rutherford’s thesis (“There is an important sense in which Chicago economics has always been institutional,” p. 21) and run with it to find implications for the very idea of institutional economics. My conclusion is that the category institutional economics (or institutionalism) may have little historiographic value.

Citation

Hammond, J.D. (2004), "REFLECTIONS ON INSTITUTIONAL AND CHICAGO ECONOMICS", Samuels, W.J. (Ed.) A Research Annual (Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, Vol. 22 Part 1), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 211-215. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0743-4154(03)22013-7