economic history

The Varied Ideologies—and Practices—of Socialist Nations in the Developing World

In an excerpt from his new book Ripe for Revolution: Building Socialism in the Third World, Harvard Business School professor Jeremy Friedman explores the...

Why the Mid-20th Century Was Not the Golden Age of Antirust

The New Brandeisian version of American history presumes that there was a mid-20th century golden age of antitrust that was displaced by a misguided...

The Fall of American Manufacturing and the Rise of Health Care

In an excerpt from his new book The Next Shift, University of Chicago historian Gabriel Winant explores how deindustrialization and the decline of the...

The Chicago Planning Program and the Interdisciplinary Tradition of the Chicago School

The Chicago Planning Program, an interdisciplinary program that operated at the University of Chicago between 1947 and 1956, is an often-neglected part of the...

Lessons from the Past? How Ordoliberal Competition Theory Can Address Market Power in the Digital Age

Some of the lessons uncovered by ordoliberal thinkers during the interwar period in Germany could help us tackle the current challenges posed by the...

The Unintended Economist: How Thorstein Veblen Pivoted From Philosophy to Economics

In an excerpt from his book Veblen: The Making of an Economist Who Unmade Economics, Charles Camic explores the connection between Thorstein Veblen’s economic...

The Invention of Economic Growth: The Forgotten Origins of Gross Domestic Product in American Institutionalist Economics

Contemporary critiques of GDP’s role in policymaking see it as an ideological abstraction, emblematic of neoliberalism, that misrepresents “real” economic conditions. What these critiques...

Cogs and Monsters: Is Economics Destined to Remain a Dismal Science?

In her bold new book Cogs and Monsters: What Economics Is, and What It Should Be, Cambridge professor Diane Coyle offers a road map...

Buchanan’s Samaritan’s Dilemma

The Samaritan’s dilemma is not only about the detrimental effects help can have on the beneficiaries. As James Buchanan explained in his 1975 essay,...

Looks Can Be Deceiving: Ronald Coase and the Chicago School

Ronald Coase is typically thought of as one of the Chicago School’s brightest lights. But Coase’s relationship with Chicago was always an uneasy one,...

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