Excerpt from Modern Economic Thought: The American Contribution

The movement to reconstruct economics was well established 'in the United States long before 1929. By 1914 Thorstein Veblen had unfolded the major features of his evolutionary or cultural ver sion of economics. In the years before the outbreak of World War I, Veblen's disciples, who then included Wesley C. Mitchell, Robert F. Hoxie, Walton H. Hamilton, and other less well-known econo mists, were enthusiastic in their defense of the new economics, which came to be known as institutional economics. 2 Academic inter est in the new version of economics became so widespread by 1918 that one of the round table conferences of the annual meeting of the American Economic Association of that year was devoted to the topic of institutional economic theory.3 By 1921 Veblen's institu tional economics appears to have reached the high-level mark of its popularity. In the years of prosperity which followed the depres sion of 1920-21 the movement to reconstruct economics continued to add new members to its list of advocates, but'it didnot slavishly follow the lines drawn in earlier years by Thorstein Veblen. Younger exponents of economic heterodoxy, such as John M. Clark and Rexford G. Tugwell, brought new emphases to the work of ré vamping economic thought. These new members of the group of economists who were interested in modernizing economic science were prone to be somewhat less speculative and more concerned with immediate economic and social issues than was Veblen. They were more willing to envision economic reform within the limits of the existing private-enterprise system. Furthermore, they began to find various parts of the Veblenian interpretation somewhat outmoded. This is not to say, however, that these younger revisionists of the postwar period had developed a basic approach to economic studies which was different from Veblen's approach. On the contrary, their work was in its essentials within the Veblenian tradition. Like the pioneering leader of the..movement to revamp economics.

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