ABSTRACT
It may never be easy to provide a brief and balanced assessment of the development of economics in the United States from 1920 to 1970. At the present juncture the task is especially difficult for several reasons. The intervening lapse of time is insufficient for the requisite detached historical perspective and ‘the fullness of available data for adequate description’,1 and the terminal date for this essay coincides with an unprecedented intellectual and professional crisis in the discipline.2 Admittedly other disciplines, especially social sciences, were also undergoing an agonizing reappraisal at that time. But the trauma seems to have been especially acute in economics, a subject in the forefront of public affairs which has often been described as the ‘hardest’ of the ‘soft’ sciences. The public dimension of American economics will be examined in some detail later in this essay. The more fundamental issue of economics’ scientific character and status cannot, however, be deferred since it necessarily affects the interpretative standpoint adopted in a synoptic review of this kind. The crisis around 1970 left a legacy of doubts and a deep division of opinion about the past record, present condition and future prospects of economics; and the usual problems of historical judgement are exacerbated by the currently confused state of debate in the philosophy, history and sociology of science, which has a direct bearing on my subject. It therefore seems advisable to begin with some brief explanatory remarks on the approach adopted here in the hope that they may offset the inescapably subjective and selective features of the following account.
