Frank W. Taussig's Institutionalism

摘要

In his magisterial treatise, The Economic Mind in American Civilization, Joseph Dorfman argued that despite Frank W. Taussig's liberal editorship of the Quarterly Journal of Economics (QJE henceforth) and his tolerance of heterodox ideas in general, Taussig was actually quite conservative (1949, 267). He also noted elsewhere that Taussig had a "cautious bent towards social change," particularly regarding collective bargaining, compulsory social insurance, and unemployment insurance because unlike her British and German counterparts, the USA lacked the relevant socio-political or institutional framework to adequately handle these practices (1959, 240-243). These characterizations, along with Joseph Schumpeter's description of Taussig as "the American Marshall," have seemingly embedded in the minds of historians of economic thought an image of Taussig as a conservative, neoclassical economist. But just as scholars of an institutionalist persuasion—particularly in the area of contemporary evolutionary economics—have "discovered" Alfred Marshall's heterodox leanings, Taussig may deserve a similar reconsideration. This paper seeks to take up the earlier leads provided by Schumpeter (1966) and Warren Samuels (1988, 1989) and draw attention to the fact Taussig had much more in common with American institutionalism, and in particular with elements of Thorstein Veblen's work, than historians of economic thought have hitherto considered. In fact, Taussig shared many of the traits widely cited by historians of economic thought to characterize those working in the institutionalist tradition and pursued a research agenda that had much in common with the pivotal institutionalists of his time.