ABSTRACT
Gary Mongiovi is Professor of Economics at St. John's University, New York. Gary Mongiovi was interviewed by Andrew Mearman at the Manhattan Campus of St. John's University, New York, in April 2017. He was a mainstream guy but an old-fashioned kind of mainstream economist – the kind of mainstream guy people saw in the early '70s – someone who was anchored to good practical mainstream work, who saw the utility of basic neoclassical tools and applied them in a sensible way. The thesis was on the professionalisation of American economics, so it was concerned with that period of the formation of the American Economic Association when there were all these debates going on about whether economics should be mainly a “science” or a tool for the improvement of society. People are reacting to being marginalised by trying to close ranks.
