Technical Development

About 1870, economics moved away from being a subject which was largely in the hands of non-professionals — businessmen, administrators and civil servants, as well as politicians, revolutionaries and even soldiers — and became largely, though not exclusively, the province of academic economists. The subject changed from being called Political Economy’, and became ‘Economics’. It was, however, more than an alteration in name that took place. The impact of economics becoming a subject in the hands mostly of academics rather than people with other jobs to do had a marked effect on where the main emphasis and focus of interest of the major participants henceforward was to be found. The character of the subject changed subtly away from its practical roots — trying to explain the world so that it could be changed — to a more abstract approach, where explanation was all, or nearly all, and prescription counted for much less. Whereas political economy was primarily concerned with influencing policy, economics, with relatively few, although important, exceptions, was from now onwards intended mainly to be more like a scientific subject, concerned with providing convincing theories about relationships, but with less and less of a normative and prescriptive, policy-orientated content.