Thomas A. Stapleford

Defining a ‘living wage’ in America: transformations in union wage theories, 1870–1930

Whereas union leaders in nineteenth-century America often used the phrase ‘a living wage’ to describe appropriate compensation for skilled workers, today that phrase is typically linked to unskilled labor. I argue that the erosion of ties between skilled workers and the living wage occurred in several stages between 1900 and 1930. Having traditionally avoided quantifying the ‘living wage’, unions were forced to do so within arbitration hearings during and after the First World War. Finding their proposed standards rejected by most boards, union officials turned to an alternative justification for boosting the wages of skilled workers: the need to balance productive capacity with an expanded mass consumer market. That justification would later become a central part of left-wing political economy during the New Deal, while the living wage became tied primarily to efforts to boost minimum rates.

Aftershocks from a Revolution: Ordinal Utility and Cost-of-Living Indexes

This essay argues that beneath the superficial linearity of the history of neoclassical price index theory lie important conceptual ruptures that are linked to the ordinal revolution, including a radical transformation in the core objective for cost-of-living indexes. Revealing these ruptures produces a more accurate history of both the development of neoclassical price index theory and its reception. Furthermore, we can recognize how transformations in this theory have made cost-of-living indexes more coherent with existing traditions of empirical macroeconomics even as they may have reduced the indexes’ suitability for other functions, notably adjusting income payments.

Introduction to the Symposium on the Contributions of Business to Economics

Historians of economics have largely overlooked the role of businesses in the formation of economic ideas. Indeed, this is true even of historians who are most attuned to the crucial role non-economists have played in shaping the ideas and practices of economics. For example, in his (1999) essay: “How should we write the history of twentieth-century economics?” Roy Weintraub omits any mention of the role of businesspersons. In keeping with his own work, Weintraub urges historians to examine not only the theoretical ideas, but also how these ideas have been translated across the economics profession into communities comprising administrators and policymakers. He emphasizes: “Discussing economic thought in the twentieth century from this perspective would encourage writing histories of eleemosynary foundations, government agencies, political organizations, private political advocacy groups, and a whole range of journalistic practices and news-reporting strategies” (148). We suggest that businesses should be added to Weintraub’s list. This is not to suggest that historians have not examined the business-economics nexus because they certainly have, primarily in two ways.

Historical Epistemology & the History of Economics: Views Through the Lens of Practice

The history of economics has often been described as the “history of economic thought.�? In this essay, I explore an alternative perspective that builds on the French tradition of historical epistemology and treats economics as a social practice. I argue that a practice-based view provides a more philosophically robust conception of historiography and a richer field of investigation for historians of economics.

Reconceiving Quality: Political Economy and the Rise of Hedonic Price Indexes

Prior to the 1960s most American economists rejected hedonic techniques as a solution to the problem of quality change in price indexes. I argue that behind that judgment lay a deeper conceptual divide over how best to define and assess product quality: through expert testing or through market price differentials. Most American economists working on price indexes at the time had ties to the U.S. consumer movement, which emphasized consumer ignorance and promoted expert analysis as the only reliable guide to product quality. During the postwar era, these ties began to dissolve, and as younger economists more readily accepted the market as an arbiter of quality, they likewise saw the econometric analysis of prices and product characteristics as a logical and unproblematic tool for handling quality change in price indexes.

Shaping Knowledge about American Labor: External Advising at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in the Twentieth Century

Created in 1884, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has been the major federal source for data in the United States on labor-related topics such as prices, unemployment, compensation, productivity, and family expenditures. This essay traces the development and transformation of formal and informal consulting relationships between the BLS and external groups (including academic social scientists, unions, businesses, and other government entities) over the twentieth century. Though such a history cannot, of course, provide a comprehensive analysis of how political values have shaped the construction of labor statistics during this period, I argue that it can nevertheless provide important insights into the political context for the construction of knowledge about American workers and their living and working conditions.

Science, virtue, and moral formation

Virtue and ethical excellence have been topics of growing interest in moral education and moral development research (e.g., Annas, Narvaez, & Snow, 2016; Battaly & Nichols, 2016). This work seeks t...

Business and the Making of American Econometrics, 1910–1940

From 1910 – 1940, the practice of business and the practice of economics came to inform one another in novel ways, a reconfiguration that included the emergence of econometrics. The core locus for this intersection came from the rise of commercial forecasting—whether analyses of future demand, price and cost fluctuations, or financial markets—based on the analysis of statistical data. Forecasting united a suite of specific interactions with the practice of economics: business support for the construction of specific economic data (making possible new forms of econometric analysis); the creation of a new social role: the economist/business expert with advanced academic training (who engaged in both practices and used each to serve the other); and the consequent development of new knowledge (especially in demand analysis and financial economics). INTRODUCTION Assessing the contributions of businesspersons to econometrics raises two basic questions: who counts as a businessperson, and what do we mean by econometrics? When considering businesspersons in early twentieth-century America, we might imagine bespectacled corporate managers, powerful industrial magnates, conservative New York bankers, or perhaps slick Wall Street brokers. Econometrics, on the other hand, seems the most abstruse part of economics— especially if we picture the later work of the Cowles Commission—conjuring images of dense mathematical equations or complex arguments about proper statistical analysis. If our question is “What direct contribution did bankers and corporate managers make to the major models or theories that populated Econometrica at mid-century?”, then the answer would seem to be “Not much.” Yet that question may be misleading. First of all, the category of businessperson includes anyone engaged in business activities, especially in an entrepreneurial or leadership role. Today, we are very familiar with academic economists leading companies or acting as consultants, and similar scenarios existed in the early twentieth century (though perhaps on a lesser scale). Second, by taking 1 Fourcade, et. al. (2015, 90) notes that a forthcoming essay by Glen Weyl shows “that 40 percent of the income of economic authors in the fields of finance and industrial organization comes from consulting activities.”

Navigating the Shoals of Self-Reporting: Data Collection in US Expenditure Surveys since 1920

This essay examines the evolution of data-collection practices in American expenditure surveys over much of the twentieth century. Economists conducting expenditure surveys faced one fundamental concern: their success hinged on the cooperation of interviewees (typically housewives) and the reliability of their testimony. Investigators recognized that both dependencies posed serious problems, and they struggled to devise effective solutions. I argue that over the course of the twentieth century, the methodology of US expenditure surveys evolved in a nonteleological way, as new approaches led the BLS to adopt previously rejected techniques and to abandon other strategies that were formerly of central importance. In charting this history, the essay reveals the many challenges and complexity of gathering a seemingly straightforward form of economic data.