Defining Economics: The Long Road to Acceptance of the Robbins Definition
Robbins' "Essay" gave economics a definition that came to dominate the professional literature. This definition laid a foundation that could be seen as justifying both the narrowing of economic theory to the theory of constrained maximization or rational choice and economists' ventures into other social science fields. Though often presented as self-evidently correct, both the definition itself and the developments that it has been used to support were keenly contested. This paper traces the reception, diffusion and contesting of the Robbins definition, arguing that this process took around three decades and that even then there was still significant dissent. Copyright (c) The London School of Economics and Political Science 2009.
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Volume (Year): 76 (2009)
Issue (Month): s1 (October)
Pages: 805-820
| Handle: | RePEc:bla:econom:v:76:y:2009:i:s1:p:805-820 |
| Contact details of provider: | Postal: Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE Phone: +44 (020) 7405 7686 Web page: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0013-0427 More information through EDIRC
|
| Order Information: | Web: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/subs.asp?ref=0013-0427 |
No references listed on IDEAS
You can help add them by filling out this form.
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:econom:v:76:y:2009:i:s1:p:805-820. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Wiley-Blackwell Digital Licensing)
or (Christopher F. Baum)If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.