Constructing Economic Science: The Invention of a Discipline 1850-1950

Constructing Economic Science explores how the modern university discipline of economics emerged, tracing its path from commercial education to its institutional creation. It demonstrates how finance, student numbers, curricula, teaching, new media, employment demands, and international perceptions shaped economics as we know it today, providing a foundation for understanding how this new language transformed public policy.

Format: Hardback
Length: 456 pages
Publication date: 27 April 2022
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc

During the late 19th century, concerns about international commercial rivalry frequently emerged in terms of national provisions for training and education, and the role of universities in such provisions. It was within this context that the modern university discipline of economics emerged. The inaugural undergraduate economics program was established in Cambridge in 1903; however, this marked merely the beginning. Constructing Economic Science explores the journey from commercial education to the discipline of economics and the development of an economics curriculum that could be replicated globally. Instead of portraying this transition epistemologically, as a process of theoretical creation, Keith Tribe demonstrates how the new science of economics was primarily an institutional creation of the modern university. He illustrates how finance, student numbers, curricula, teaching, new media, the demands of employment, and broader international perceptions that industrializing economies required a technically skilled workforce all played their part in shaping economics as we know it today. This study elucidates the initial conditions that shaped the science of economics, thereby providing a foundation for understanding how this new language transformed public policy.

Weight: 760g
Dimension: 164 x 244 x 33 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780190491741