Ayres' Theory of Economic Progress: An Evaluation of Its Place in Economic Literature

David Hamilton

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 1981, vol. 40, issue 4, 427-438

Abstract: Abstract. Clarence E. Ayres was unfortunate in certain of his critics; they missed the point. With the publication of a new edition of his classic. The Theory of Economic Progress, the time is ripe to re‐evaluate Ayres' contributions. Ayres, like Thorstein Veblen before him, assimilated into economics the findings of other social science and humanistic disciplines, particularly anthropology. Both portrayed clearly the role in the economy of what Veblen called the matter‐of‐fact and Ayres ‘technology,’ The understanding of the role of technology and its extension in economic progress, implicit in Veblen, is made explicit by Ayres. Similarly the insight that certain entrepreneurial and financial activities which are ceremonial are non‐essential to the technological process and hence dispensable is a contribution by Ayres to the one by Veblen that enables us to distinguish the scientific elements in economic theory from the theological.

Date: 1981
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1536-7150.1981.tb01660.x

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:ajecsc:v:40:y:1981:i:4:p:427-438

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0002-9246

Access Statistics for this article

American Journal of Economics and Sociology is currently edited by Laurence S. Moss

More articles in American Journal of Economics and Sociology from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().