Constructing Economic Science: The Invention of a Discipline 1850-1950(Oxford Studies in the History of Economics)

An accessible account of the role of the modern university in the creation of economics During the late nineteenth century concerns about international commercial rivalry were often expressed in terms of national provision for training and education, and the role of universities in such provision. It was in this context that the modern university discipline of economics emerged. The first undergraduate economics program was inaugurated in Cambridge in 1903; but this was merely a starting point. Constructing Economic Science charts the path through commercial education to the discipline of economics and the creation of an economics curriculum that could then be replicated around the world. Rather than describing this transition epistemologically, as a process of theoretical creation, Keith Tribe shows how the new "science" of economics was primarily an institutional creation of the modern university. He demonstrates how finance, student numbers, curricula, teaching, new media, the demands of employment, and more broadly, the international perception that industrializing economies required a technically-skilled workforce, all played their part in shaping economics as we know it today. This study explains the conditions originally shaping the science of economics, providing in turn a foundation for an understanding of the way in which this new language transformed public policy.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Note to Readers PART I. From Public Knowledge to Institutional Discourse 1. Discourse and Discipline 2. Re-organising the University: The German Model, the American Version of that Model, and the University of London 3. The Social Mediation of Economic Discourse PART II. The Cambridge Moment 4. The Moral Sciences Tripos and Cambridge Political Economy 5. The Cambridge Tripos in Economic and Political Science: Structure and Outcome 6. What is "Marshallianism"? PART III. Alternative Histories 7. Why not Oxford? 8. The Unrealised Prospect of Historical Economics PART IV. Commerce and Economics 9. Models for Commercial Education: The USA, France, and Germany 10. Higher Commercial Education in Great Britain and Ireland - Late Start, Early Dissolution 11. Commerce and Economics at the London School of Economics 12. The Scientisation of Economics 13. Concluding Remarks Appendices Bibliography

About the Author :
Keith Tribe is an economic historian and independent scholar with a long-standing interest in language and translation. He is currently a Senior Research Fellow in History at the University of Tartu and teaches history of economics at the University of Birmingham. He is the author of The Economy of the Word (OUP, 2015).

Review :
Tribe's book is a worthy recipient of the best book prize of the European Society for the History of Economic Thought (2022) and will be a work of reference on the formation of economics as an academic discipline for years to come. Keith Tribe's new book is fascinating. Constructing Economic Science is a valuable and empirically rich book that explores the making of economics as an academic discipline in the UK in the period 1850-1950. Constructing Economic Science is an outstanding monograph. This is a book that should bear a health and safety advisory: in places it gives the reader a jolt and different people will be jolted at different moments. I highly recommend this book to all economists who are interested in how our subjecthas come to be studied and taught up to the present day.