‘VALUE IS NOT A FACT’: REPRODUCTION COST AND THE TRANSITION FROM CLASSICAL TO NEOCLASSICAL REGULATION IN GILDED AGE AMERICA

Nicola Giocoli

Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2018, vol. 40, issue 4, 445-470

Abstract: The paper draws on Stephen Siegel (1984) to argue that, while paving the way for constitutionalizing the free market in Lochner v. New York (1905), the reproduction cost method that the Supreme Court established in Smyth v. Ames (1898) as the preferred technique for assessing the value of a business for regulatory purposes also exposed the conventional character of any valuation exercise, against the claims of objectivity made by classical economists and mainstream jurists. The inconsistency between recognizing that “value is not a fact” and the classical laissez-faire philosophy underlying the Court’s jurisprudence did not escape progressive critics, who concluded that government could legitimately fine-tune regulation in order to affect a business’s value and pursue alternative socio-economic goals.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

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:cup:jhisec:v:40:y:2018:i:04:p:445-470_00

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of the History of Economic Thought from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().