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Professional Economists and Policymaking in the United States, 1880-1929

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Professional Economists and Policymaking in the United States, 1880-1929 ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: IRRELEVANT GENIUS: PROFESSIONAL ECONOMISTS AND POLICYMAKING IN THE UNITED STATES, 1880-1929 Jonathan S. Franklin, Doctor of Philosophy, 2014 Dissertation Directed By: Professor David B. Sicilia, Department of History The rapid establishment and expansion of economics departments in colleges across the United State in the late nineteenth century indicates a significant shift in the way Americans understood economic science and its importance to federal economic policy. This dissertation addresses that phenomenon by explaining how American economists professionalized; and how that process influenced economic policymaking in the U.S. from the formation of the American Economic Association in 1885 to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Chapters alternate between analyzing the dilemmas economists faced while crafting a distinct academic discipline and investing early professional economists’ role in the federal economic policymaking process. Three emerging themes help explain the consistent failure of early U.S. economists to translate modern economic theory to economic policy in a timely fashion. First, public skepticism and the persistence of folk economics proved to be a powerful deterrent to professionally-trained economists’ authority in debates over policy matters. The combination of democratic idealism, populist politics, and skepticism regarding the motivations of professionally-trained economists undercut much of the social prestige professional economists garnered as educated elites. Second, disagreement among professional economists, often brought on by young economists’ efforts to overturn a century’s worth of received wisdom in classical economic theory, fostered considerable dissent within the field. Dissent, in turn, undermined the authority of professional economists and often led to doubt regarding economists’ abilities among the public and policy compromises that failed to solve economic problems. Third, networking was central in the policymaking process. Personal relationships often were crucial in determining which prerogatives won out, a fact that indicates how haphazardly economic theory was applied to the nation's most pressing economic problems. IRRELEVANT GENIUS: PROFESSIONAL ECONOMISTS AND POLICYMAKING IN THE UNITED STATES, 1880-1929 BY Jonathan Stevenson Franklin Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2014 Advisory Committee: Professor David B. Sicilia, Chair Professor Julie Greene Professor David Freund Professor John Joseph Wallis Professor Brent Goldfarb © Copyright by Jonathan S. Franklin 2014 Table of Contents Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………….......ii Introduction…………………………………………………………………...………….1 Historiography…………………………………………………………................9 Study Overview...………………………………………………………………..21 Chapter One: The Problems at Hand, 1885-1900.…………………………………....27 Enter the Modern Economist…………………………………………………….28 Policing the Boundaries…………………………………………………….…....44 The Amateur Economist………………………………………………...............56 Chapter Two: The Money Question………………..…………………………............64 Justifying Free Silver………………………………………………………….....70 Economists Have Their Say…………………………………………………..….80 Moving on Reform…………………………………………………………...…..90 A Missed Opportunity……………………………………………………...…….99 Chapter Three: On Firm Ground, 1900-1916………………………………..……...103 Growth and Expansion………………………………………………..………...105 The Methodological and Ideological Battle………………………..…………...117 The Problem with the “New Economics”………………………..……………..127 The Growing Gap……………………………………………….……………...134 Chapter Four: Economists and the Search for Industrial Order….…………........145 The Wisconsin School……………………………………….………………....148 The Wisconsin Idea Goes National………………………….………………….158 Obstacles to Influence……………………………………….………………….168 Chapter Five: Obscured Irrelevance: Economists in the Boom Years, 1917- 1929……………………………………………………………………………………..174 False Promise……………………………………………………………...……175 A New Era with Old Dilemmas………………………………………………...189 Defining the Indefinable………………………………………………………..193 Amateurs and Businessmen Siphon Prestige…………………………………...198 Chapter Six: Stuck in the Middle: Economists, Agricultural Reform, and the Road to Crisis ……………………………………………………………………….…….…212 The State of Agricultural Economics…………………………………..……….213 Defining the Problem…………………………………………………….……..217 A Half-Baked Solution…………………………………………………….…...223 Pursuing the Panacea……………………………………………………….......230 Political Stand-off……………………………………………………………....235 Toward Crisis…………………………………………………………………...239 Conclusion: The Legacy of the Professional Economist…………………..….……..256 Into the Post-WW II Period.………………………………….………………...260 In Praise of the Dismal Science……………………………………………..….272 Appendix A………………………………………………………………..…………...279 Bibliography………………………………………………………………..………….280 Acknowledgements This project was supported by an Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., Travel fellowship from the Harvard Business School; an Institute for Humane Studies fellowship from George Mason University; an Oxford University Press fellowship from the Business History Conference; funding from the Duke History of Political Economy Center; and a University of Maryland History Department dissertation award. This funding allowed me to work with the American Economic Association’s papers at the Duke University archives, as well as the personal papers of relevant economists at the Wisconsin Historical Society and Harvard University. I am sincerely grateful for the opportunity provided by these fellowships. I am also grateful for the assistance I received from numerous archivists and scholars. In particular, Harold Miller at the Wisconsin Historical Society, Elizabeth Dunn at the Duke Special Collections Library, and Lynda Leahy at the Schlesinger Library. I would like to thank Christy Chapin, Laura Tess Bundy, Judge Glock, and Adam Wolkoff for their thoughtful feedback on both the content and form of my work. I would also like to thank my dissertation committee members, Julie Greene, David Freund, Brent Goldfarb, and John Wallis, and my advisor, David Sicilia, whose patience and generosity cannot be exaggerated. I reserve the rights to all errors in judgment in this dissertation, naturally. A special thanks is reserved for wife, Patricia, whose love and support trumps all. ii Introduction Tremors from the sub-prime financial crisis of 2008 continue to reverberate through the world economy. Anecdotal evidence suggests that professional and armchair economists alike have received a dramatic increase in media attention since the crisis emerged – particularly in the last year of the 2012 Presidential race when the candidates’ economic expertise dominated discussion. Along with arguments from former presidential economic advisors, Federal Reserve board members, and Secretaries of the Treasury, voters heard candidates invoke the ideas of a grab-bag of economists. Perhaps none better illustrate this race for the high ground than Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. Their highly-influential book, This Time Its Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly and follow-up working paper were released shortly after the crisis began and directly addressed the ramifications of national debt and financial collapse in modern economies – a salient issue throughout the election.1 In true political fashion, those on both sides of the political spectrum attempted to invoke Reinhart and Rogoff’s work as evidence of their opponents’ failure to grasp economic reality, although fiscal conservatives seemed to benefit most by virtue of the study’s conclusion regarding a negative correlation between high national debt and economic growth.2 A minor controversy erupted in April 2013 when a graduate student in 1 Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff, This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff, Growth in a Time of Debt, NBER Working Paper 15639 (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, January 2010). 2 Paul Krugman and Robin Wells, “Our Giant Banking Crisis—What to Expect,” The New York Review of Books, May 13, 2010, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/may/13/our-giant-banking-crisis/. 1 economics at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst discovered errors in Rogoff and Reinhart’s calculations, completely discrediting their conclusions for some, merely modifying conclusions according to others, and laying bare the frustrations of applying economic expertise to public policy for all.3 Such a contentious and politicized invocation of economists’ expertise may strike some as evidence of a recent decline in the integrity and competence of both American economists and politicians. In fact, the practice of choosing economists based on policies they prescribe, or selectively co-opting their ideas for political gain, is as old as the profession itself. Since their emergence in the late nineteenth-century, professional economists have been a fixture in public life in the United States. They have been a particularly frustrating and complicated fixture for policymakers and the voting public alike, however. Professional economists in the U.S. have consistently been accused of being indecisive and unreliable, yet have continued garner press coverage, prestigious awards, and advisory roles at the highest level of government. This dissertation
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