IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hes/wpaper/0040.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Siting the New Economic Science: The Cowles Commission’s Activity Analysis Conference of June 1949

Author

Listed:
  • Till Düppe

    (University of Quebec at Montreal)

  • E. Roy Weintraub

    (Duke University)

Abstract

In the decades following WWII, the Cowles Commission for Research in Economics came to represent new technical standards that informed most advances in economic theory. The public emergence of this community was manifest at a conference held in June 1949 titled Activity Analysis of Production and Allocation. Our history of this event situates the Cowles Commission among the institutions of post-war science in-between National Laboratories and the supreme discipline of Cold War academia, mathematics. Although the conference created the conditions under which economics, as a discipline, would transform itself, the participants themselves had little concern for the intellectual battles that had defined prewar university economics departments. The conference bore witness to a new intellectual culture in economic science based on shared scientific norms and techniques un-interrogated by conflicting notions of the meaning of either science or economics.

Suggested Citation

  • Till Düppe & E. Roy Weintraub, 2013. "Siting the New Economic Science: The Cowles Commission’s Activity Analysis Conference of June 1949," Working Papers 0040, European Historical Economics Society (EHES).
    • Handle: RePEc:hes:wpaper:0040
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ehes.org/wp/EHES_No40.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Amadae, S.M., 2003. "Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 1, number 9780226016535, September.
    2. Marcel Boumans, 2012. "Observations in a Hostile Environment: Morgenstern on the Accuracy of Economic Observations," History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, vol. 44(5), pages 114-136, Supplemen.
    3. Mirowski,Philip, 2002. "Machine Dreams," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521772839.
    4. Mirowski,Philip, 2002. "Machine Dreams," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521775267.
    5. Backhouse,Roger E. & Fontaine,Philippe, 2010. "The History of the Social Sciences since 1945," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521889063.
    6. Guglielmo, Mark, 2008. "The Contribution of Economists to Military Intelligence During World War II," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 68(1), pages 109-150, March.
    7. F. M. Scherer, 2000. "The Emigration of German-Speaking Economists after 1933," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 38(3), pages 614-626, September.
    8. Francisco Louçã & Sofia Terlica, 2011. "The Fellowship of Econometrics: Selection and Diverging Views in the Province of Mathematical Economics, from the 1930s to the 1950s," History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, vol. 43(5), pages 57-85, Supplemen.
    9. Arthur F. Burns & Wesley C. Mitchell, 1946. "Measuring Business Cycles," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number burn46-1, May.
    10. Leonard,Robert, 2010. "Von Neumann, Morgenstern, and the Creation of Game Theory," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521562669.
    11. Weintraub, E Roy, 1983. "On the Existence of a Competitive Equilibrium: 1930-1954," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 21(1), pages 1-39, March.
    12. Pedro Garcia Duarte & Gilberto Tadeu Lima, 2012. "Microfoundations Reconsidered," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14869.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Erich Pinzón Fuchs, 2014. "Econometrics as a Pluralistic Scientific Tool for Economic Planning: On Lawrence R. Klein's Econometrics," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 14080, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    2. Béatrice CHERRIER & Jean-Baptiste FLEURY, 2014. "Whose values? The Rise, Fragmentation and Marginalization of Collective Choice in Postwar Economics, 1940-1981," Economics Working Paper from Condorcet Center for political Economy at CREM-CNRS 2014-05-ccr, Condorcet Center for political Economy.
    3. Luca Lambertini, 2013. "John von Neumann between Physics and Economics: A methodological note," Review of Economic Analysis, Digital Initiatives at the University of Waterloo Library, vol. 5(2), pages 177-189, December.
    4. Steven Medema, 2009. "Francesco Parisi and Charles K. Rowley, eds., The Origins of Law and Economics: Essays by the Founding Fathers," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 22(1), pages 113-118, March.
    5. Koehn, Julia, 2011. "From tools to theories: The emergence of modern financial economics," Wittener Diskussionspapiere zu alten und neuen Fragen der Wirtschaftswissenschaft 16/2011, Witten/Herdecke University, Faculty of Management and Economics.
    6. Ivan Boldyrev & Olessia Kirtchik, 2014. "General Equilibrium Theory behind the Iron Curtain: The Case of Victor Polterovich," History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, vol. 46(3), pages 435-461, Fall.
    7. Jérôme Lallement & Amanar Akhabbar, 2011. "Appliquer la théorie économique de l'équilibre général : de Walras à Leontief," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-00609684, HAL.
    8. Shyam Sunder, 2006. "Determinants of Economic Interaction: Behavior or Structure," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 1(1), pages 21-32, May.
    9. Gaffeo, E. & Catalano, M. & Clementi, F. & Delli Gatti, D. & Gallegati, M. & Russo, A., 2007. "Reflections on modern macroeconomics: Can we travel along a safer road?," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 382(1), pages 89-97.
    10. Kirtchik, Olessia & Boldyrev, Ivan, 2024. "“Rise And Fall” Of The Walrasian Program In Economics: A Social And Intellectual Dynamics Of The General Equilibrium Theory," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, vol. 46(1), pages 1-26, March.
    11. Hardy Hanappi, 2008. "The concept of choice: why and how innovative behaviour is not just stochastic," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 18(2), pages 275-289, April.
    12. David Colander & Richard Holt & Barkley Rosser, 2004. "The changing face of mainstream economics," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(4), pages 485-499.
    13. David Teira Serrano, 2006. "A positivist tradition in early demand theory," Journal of Economic Methodology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(1), pages 25-47.
    14. Mennicken, Andrea, 2008. "Connecting worlds: the translation of international auditing standards into post-Soviet audit practice," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 27070, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    15. Hanappi, Hardy, 2004. "The Survival of the Fattest. Evolution of needs, lust and social value in a long-run perspective," MPRA Paper 29424, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. H. Spencer Banzhaf & James Boyd, 2012. "The Architecture and Measurement of an Ecosystem Services Index," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 4(4), pages 1-32, March.
    17. Sandra Silva, 2009. "On evolutionary technological change and economic growth: Lakatos as a starting point for appraisal," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 111-135, February.
    18. Silva, Ester G. & Teixeira, Aurora A.C., 2008. "Surveying structural change: Seminal contributions and a bibliometric account," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 273-300, December.
    19. Castro e Silva, Manuela & Teixeira, Aurora A.C., 2011. "A bibliometric account of the evolution of EE in the last two decades: Is ecological economics (becoming) a post-normal science?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(5), pages 849-862, March.
    20. D. Wade Hands, 2012. "The Rise and Fall of Walrasian Microeconomics: The Keynesian Effect," Chapters, in: Microfoundations Reconsidered, chapter 3, Edward Elgar Publishing.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Cowles Commission; activity analysis; linear programming; general equilibrium theory; von Neumann; Koopmans; Dantzig; fixed point theorems;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B2 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought since 1925
    • C0 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hes:wpaper:0040. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Paul Sharp (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ehessea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.