ABSTRACT
In a brief panoramic survey of American economic ideas, compromise is unavoidable. Limitations of space preclude the adoption of an encyclopedic cultural approach (like Joseph Dorfman’s The Economic Mind in American Civilization), yet to go to the opposite extreme and focus narrowly on the development of economic science would involve concentrating mainly on the twentieth century, thereby obscuring both the continuity and the essentially pragmatic character of much of the national economic literature. Two interrelated major themes will therefore be highlighted: the repeated efforts to adapt the inherited corpus of European ideas to perceived domestic needs and conditions, and the gradual emergence and professionalization of economics as a social science discipline. This procedure is designed to avoid dichotomizing theory and practice, since adaptation includes modifications and extensions of theory as well as its application to current and prospective problems; and economic writers can function in both fields as specialists or generalists, amateurs or professionals.
