ABSTRACT
The historical school distrusted the methods and results of classical economics. It proposed to start afresh by collecting a far wider range of observations and in the fullness of time to derive more trustworthy generalizations by "induction". Less like the standard pattern and more like the historical program was the institutional approach to economics. A scientific economics is one that concentrates attention upon the cumulative change of economic institutions. In one's country there are traces of an inclination to draw a dividing line between "business economics" and economics proper. As the men in business economics pass beyond the pioneering stage of their work, they will develop standards as scholarly as those cherished by the strictest adepts in economic theory. On the other hand, if economic theorists seek to understand what is going on about them, they can find no more helpful allies than their colleagues teaching in business schools and working in business enterprises.
