The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter: Chicago’s Climb to Glory

Craig Freedman
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Craig Freedman: University of New South Wales

A chapter in In Search of the Two-Handed Economist, 2016, pp 75-121 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract These days, economists talk about the Chicago School as though the meaning behind that phrase was both common knowledge and unquestionably understood. But if those words represent anything more than an empty formulation, the assured attribution buttressing that meaning lies in the ghosts of theories now well past their shelf-life. The type of rock-ribbed price theory that formed the wedge Milton Friedman and George Stigler adroitly used to shatter the immediate post-war consensus no longer sufficiently differentiates the clear-water approach of Chicago from the salt-water recipe characterizing Harvard or Berkeley. Like any other discipline or profession, economics moves on. After years of cross-breeding and mutually dependent influences, such a clear-cut distinction belongs to the past rather than the present state of the profession. Bloody battles and past triumphs are left to historians of thought to dissect. However, what stubbornly persist are labels and oral traditions that are often built upon misunderstandings and fractured fairy tales handed down from one generation to the next.

Keywords: Chicago School; Price Theory; True Believer; Conservative Economist; Good Mind (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:pshchp:978-1-137-58974-3_3

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DOI: 10.1057/978-1-137-58974-3_3

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