ABSTRACT
As post-autistic economics moves beyond criticism and on to the task of building a more relevant and robust economic science, one challenge is to develop a theoretical framework that will guide pluralistic borrowing from a variety of disciplines and approaches. Some useful guidelines for development of such a framework may be found in the history of American economic thought as it developed and flourished in the first half of the twentieth century. During the first five decades of that century, a group of economists who taught at a number of the major American universities created the reasonably coherent, pluralistic and non-autistic approach to the study of economies and economic issues known as institutionalism – an approach that dominated American economic thought during the interwar years.
