A Perilous Progress: Economists and Public Purpose in Twentieth-Century America

In the tradition of Dorothy Ross, Mary Furner, Geoffrey Hodgson, and David Colander, Michael A. Bernstein has produced a first-rate analysis of the professionalization of social science. His book is not only a well-informed history of the American economics profession but also an insightful analysis of its relationship with government and a philippic against what Bernstein sees as the profession's recent self-prostitution. The book argues that, like other social sciences, modern economics began in the 1880s. As it groped its way to rigor and respectability, it received immense boosts from the federal government. (State-sponsored efforts such as the Wisconsin Idea receive little attention here.) The profession's yeoman service during the Great War continued into the 1920s, especially in Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover's drive to gather economic data for wise public policy making. The Great Depression and especially the massive mobilization for World War II solidified the relevance of economists' insights. The climax came with the Employment Act of 1946. It set up the Council of Economic Advisors, mandated the annual Economic Report of the President, and formalized the federal government's responsibility for prosperity.