Introduction

Economics is a relatively young academic discipline. Until the early twentieth century, only a few chairs existed at the established universities of Europe and North America, mostly in the faculties of law or philosophy. In the turbulent period between the two World Wars, when deflation, hyperinflation and the Great Depression raged in many countries, the public interest in economics was greatly intensified. But its breakthrough as a prominent and widely studied discipline came only after the Second World War, roughly sixty years ago.