Article ID: CBB921649138

Institutional Economics and the Progressive Movement for the Social Control of American Business (Winter 2019)

unapi

This article investigates the history of the Progressive Era effort to develop new techniques and technologies of control over American business and corporations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A revolution in Progressive economic regulation was rooted in the intellectual work of the so-called institutional economists—particularly in the context of what economists and lawyers like Richard Ely, John Commons, and Walton Hamilton ultimately talked about as the movement for the “social control” of business, with distinct emphasis on the legal and regulatory “foundations” of modern capitalism. With increased attention to dynamics rather than statics, the real social economy rather than ideal rational actors, and historical and institutional rather than theoretical and abstract renderings of business, industry, and the market, the institutionalists were directly concerned with problems of control, particularly those mechanisms of control available through law, politics, the state, and new technologies of legislative and administrative regulation.

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Associated with

Article Susie J. Pak (Winter 2019) Comment on William J. Novak: Institutional Economics and the Progressive Movement for the Social Control of American Business. Business History Review (pp. 697-699). unapi

Article Laura Phillips Sawyer; Herbert Hovenkamp (Winter 2019) New Perspectives in Regulatory History. Business History Review (pp. 659-664). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB921649138/

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Authors & Contributors
Sandvik, Pål Thonstad
Samuel P. Hanes
Balleisen, Edward J.
Espen Storli
Cohen, Joanna
Edward F. Heite
Concepts
Business history
Regulation
Management; administration
Political economy
Capitalism
Public policy
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
21st century
Progressive Era (1890s-1920s)
Places
United States
Italy
Europe
Institutions
International Monetary Fund
Penn Central Transportation Company
Chicago School of Economics
United States. Securities and Exchange Commission
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