One Man a Committee Does Not Make: Henry Manne, the AEA-AALS Joint Committee, and the Struggle to Institutionalize Law and Economics Free

Abstract

In 1965, Henry Manne convinced the Association of American Law Schools and the American Economic Association to establish an ad hoc joint committee to explore the possibilities of collaborative efforts between economists and legal scholars. This article examines the origins and activities of the joint committee and reveals that its work was far less about promoting increased interaction between economists and legal scholars than about a conscious attempt to use this committee to help fashion a particular form of law and economics that would reshape legal analysis in a way consistent with Manne's vision. Though the committee's effective life was very short and its direct influence negligible, the lessons learned informed Manne's subsequent efforts to institutionalize law and economics within the legal academy.

1. Introduction

To understand how the field known as law and economics came to occupy a prominent place in legal and economic analysis, one must look beyond the ideas and their influence and examine the institutions and entrepreneurial efforts that supported the development, dissemination, and diffusion of those ideas. Indeed, law and economics was first and foremost a movement driven and molded by academic entrepreneurs. The most important of these was Henry Manne, a Vanderbilt economics graduate with law degrees from Chicago and Yale, who was honored as one of the field's “four founders” by the American Law and Economics Association at its inaugural meeting in 1991.¹ Though his scholarship bringing economics to bear on corporations and securities regulation was of no small consequence, it was as an institution-builder that he left his most significant mark. Manne laid down the foundations for the law and economics movement in the 1970s by establishing the Law and Economics Center at the University of Miami—the first of its kind and a model for similar centers that sprang up around the country over the next two decades—and launching training programs in economics for law professors and federal judges (Gindis 2020a).² These efforts left a lasting imprint on legal education and the judiciary (Teles 2008; Priest 2020; Ash, Chen, and Naidu 2022).

At first glance, Manne's entrepreneurial successes appear to be a somewhat natural outgrowth of the scholarly efforts of people like Richard Posner (1973) and Guido Calabresi (1970), whose use of economics to address a range of legal questions played an outsized role in the development of the economic approach to law. But though these events are not unrelated, Manne's attempts to promote the application of economic thinking in legal scholarship and legal education antedate all of this. His initial efforts to develop a summer institute to train law professors in economics go back to the mid-1960s, and in the late 1960s he was also at the center of a project to establish an economics-oriented law school at the University of Rochester (Gindis 2024). This article tells the story of the third of these early efforts, a joint committee of the American Economic Association (AEA) and the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) established at Manne's instigation in December 1965 while he was a professor at the George Washington University Law School.

The committee's stated purpose, as AALS President Myres McDougal (1966: 460) noted, was to explore “matters of common concern in education and scholarship in law and economics.” It is evident, then, that already in the mid-1960s, the AALS believed that there were significant benefits to be gained from this interdisciplinary collaboration. And although this was still a period when the application of economic analysis beyond its traditional boundaries was widely frowned upon as “not economics” within the profession, the AEA's endorsement of the committee's existence signaled a belief in the potential for mutual benefits. For Manne, on the other hand, the committee was a vehicle through which he could launch his efforts to integrate what he viewed as “sound” economic thinking into law and legal education, aided by the stamp of legitimacy provided by the AEA and the AALS (Medema 2017). Differently put, the committee represented an overt attempt by Manne to create and give a particular shape to an interdisciplinary field in the making.

The endeavor began with some promise, as Manne, clearly energized for this effort, was able to draw prominent economists and legal scholars into its orbit. Yet, though the committee persisted for more than a decade, its initial promise was never realized. Indeed, it is fair to say that the committee had no direct impact on legal scholarship or legal education—its history highlighting the challenges that the economic analysis of law would confront in establishing a toehold within economics and law. The committee's ultimate legacy, though, was far from negligible, as it provided Manne with lessons that fueled his ultimate success. In particular, it highlighted for Manne the challenges of controlling the message and moving the effort forward in the sort of intellectually diverse environment that necessarily came with AEA and AALS sponsorship. Manne's experience with the committee led him to the conclusion that the realization of his dreams to infuse “Chicago-style” economic thinking into law and legal education, with a view to turning the tide on the expansion of the regulatory state, required the establishment of institutions freed of these external constraints.

2. First Steps

Manne's proposal for a joint committee came at an opportune time. It was addressed to AEA President-Elect Fritz Machlup, who for some years had been working on the economics of intellectual property and was likely to find the idea appealing. The proposal, which ran to a page and a half, outlined “two basic interests” that might occupy the committee. The first involved “matters of education in law for economic students and education in economics for law students,” while the second entailed engaging economists and law professors in “matters of mutual substantive interest.”³ To illustrate how this could play out, Manne set down eight specific topics the committee “might profitably explore,” four aligned with each of these “basic interests.” On the education front, Manne highlighted the following:⁴

• 1) The place of law materials in the undergraduate and graduate economics curricula, including a critique of existing materials available for that purpose;

• 2) Economics as a possible course in law schools, including questions of jointly taught materials and the appropriateness of existing introductory texts for law school purposes;

• 3) A round table discussion of methodological differences between economists and lawyers, including a discussion of statistical techniques, economic analysis, case law reasoning, and the somewhat institutional approach reflected in modern legal scholarship;

• 4) A discussion of various programs, institutes, and journals which might aid in the development of meaningful interdisciplinary programs.

The priority given to education here is no surprise to anyone familiar with Manne's career trajectory. But unlike the plans for an economics training program for law professors, an explicitly unidirectional effort to change legal writing and teaching that Manne began formulating at roughly the same time,⁵ the proposed joint committee agenda suggested an overt effort to foster significant interactions between the disciplines, without one dominating the other.

The remaining topics identified by Manne focused on legal issues of the moment that Manne considered emblematic of “the kind of areas in which meaningful joint investigations would be possible.” These included the following:⁶

• 5) A round table discussion of regulated industries, including economic and legal analysis of such matters as allocation of radio and TV channels and the regulation of securities markets;

• 6) A discussion of the legal and economic aspects of the fault principle versus the compensation principle in personal injury liability;

• 7) A discussion of the economic and legal aspects of the modern large corporation, including consideration of the theory of Adolf Berle;

• 8) A discussion of legal and economic aspects of corporate mergers.

It is easy to see why these topics were mentioned. Ronald Coases (1959) recent writings and testimony on broadcast frequency allocation and Guido Calabresi's (1961) work on accident law had successfully, but also controversially, applied economic analysis to legal issues. Manne, meanwhile, was personally invested in developing a legal understanding of corporations and securities markets grounded in economics and had just published what was to become a heavily cited piece on mergers and the market for corporate control in the Journal of Political Economy (Manne 1965).

Machlup put the proposal to the AEA Executive Committee at its December 1965 meeting, and the Executive approved a motion “to have the President appoint an ad hoc committee to discuss the possibilities of cooperating with the American Association of Law Schools on questions of mutual interest” (AEA 1966: 611). Three days later the AALS Executive Committee, too, put its formal stamp on this effort “to consider cooperative projects of the two associations in fields of common interest” (AALS 1966: 78). The committee's formal legitimacy thus established, Manne was now in a position to set his plan in motion.

3. Turning the Wheels

The first order of business was securing representatives from the two associations. Manne had a direct hand in the AALS selections, with McDougal readily approving Manne's proposal to serve as chairman and his recommendation to approach former Yale Law School Dean Eugene Rostow, at the time Manne's Yale JSD adviser, and Kenneth Dam, a regulatory and international law specialist from Chicago, about joining the committee.⁷ Dam was unavailable, as was Manne's next choice, his former University of Wisconsin colleague William Klein, so,⁸ on Rostow's recommendation, Manne secured Columbia's Harlan Blake,⁹ an outspoken critic of the new push to weaken antitrust law (see, e.g., Blake and Jones 1965).

Exactly how the initial members on the AEA side were chosen and the degree of Manne's input are unclear. Machlup's copy of Manne's initial proposal has scribbled on it a “Note by F.M.” listing the names of “possible members from AEA”: Coase (Chicago), Armen Alchian (UCLA), George Stigler (Chicago), Jesse Markham (Princeton), Corwin Edwards (Oregon), and Mark Massel (Brookings). Each, like Manne, brought economic thinking to bear on legal issues and had a strong interest in competition policy, regulation, and antitrust. That said, not all of them were likely to have viewed these issues in the same way as Manne, with Edwards and Massel being clear outliers (see, e.g., Edwards 1962; Massel 1962).

The committee's initial composition was unbalanced, with just three AALS representatives—Manne, Rostow, and Blake—against five from the AEA—Alchian, Coase, Massel, Stigler, and Stanford economist Gerald Meier (McDougal 1966: 460).¹⁰ But there should be no doubt that this was Manne's committee.¹¹ His May 1966 letter welcoming the members to the committee noted that he was writing to them “at the request of” the AEA and AALS presidents, but made clear that “the initiative has been given to me.” Manne indicated that he wanted to set up a summer planning meeting, running one or two days, and invited “suggestions” as to specific projects the committee might undertake. In doing so, he did not pass up the opportunity to offer his own thoughts on the subject where, once again, his interest in “law and economics education” came to the fore.¹² As it happened, however, this was also where the seeds of his eventual drift away from the committee were first sown.

The reactions to Manne's missive do not survive, save for that from Stigler, who, apart from Manne, was the biggest cheerleader for these efforts. But that is a telling statement, as even Stigler's response was muted. After noting that he was unavailable for a summer meeting, Stigler suggested that Manne was biting off quite a lot here and, worse still, was skeptical about what the committee could accomplish: “The main task of the committee is to determine why a past tradition of indifference or slight mutual hostility between lawyers and economists should now be interrupted. Quite seriously, the question is whether formal joint association is a necessary or helpful instrument of increased knowledge—and the answer isn't obvious to me.”¹³

Though Stigler's concerns were to prove prescient, they did not flow from a lack of interest in the subject matter. Indeed, he was only too willing to extol the benefits of bringing economic thinking to bear on legal issues, even in front of potentially hostile audiences (Bertrand 2020). His reaction, though, was very much of a piece with his concerns, shared by Manne, about the ability of intellectuals, whom he considered both insufficiently disposed toward the market process and excessively predisposed toward government solutions, to assimilate the insights of economics.¹⁴ If economics was to influence the law, the route, in Stigler's estimation, did not run though conversion of the latter's professoriat.

4. The Initial Meeting

Manne was undeterred by Stigler's hesitancy, going so far as to postpone the committee's initial meeting until late fall to facilitate his attendance. It took place in Chicago on November 12, 1966, and already the committee's composition had changed. Rostow had resigned following his appointment as undersecretary for political affairs in the Johnson administration, and the AALS side had been augmented by Klein, who had returned to academia after his stint in government, the rising Yale antitrust specialist Robert Bork, who in 1952 had served as an associate editor of the University of Chicago Law Review alongside Manne, and James Rahl, a torts expert from Northwestern.¹⁵ This gave the committee equal numbers on both sides, albeit with a strong “Chicago” flavor, and aligned member specialisms with the four research topics listed in Manne's original proposal.¹⁶ Though many of the details of this meeting are unknown, we can reconstruct its basic thrust from the report that Manne drafted only days after the meeting.¹⁷

4.1. Law vs. Economics

The AEA report opens innocently enough, stating that the committee members had engaged in “a general discussion of the contributions law and economics could make to each other,” and that “various devices which could be used to improve the dialogue between lawyers and economists were considered” (AEA 1967b: 715). But in elaborating the particulars, Manne's motive for this effort came into view:

The problem with law, in a nutshell, was methodological: The lawyers were guilty of bad economics, economic ignorance, or both, and the economist was well placed to provide the remedy. Of course, it was also a matter of employing the right brand of economics, though that was left unsaid.

All of this might seem benign—one side of a two-way street of intellectual interchange—were it not for the subsequent discussion of what the committee felt that economists could learn from law and legal scholarship. The problem with economics, the report argued, was that much of its literature “lacks relevancy for current problems,” contrary to the “generally more topical” legal literature. The result was problematic, in that “too frequently social or economic developments initiated, or at least closely followed, by lawyers are over and done with before the economist begins to consider them.” The committee's contention was that the policymaking process “could be improved” if economists took up these problems in a timelier fashion rather than “from the more comfortable but less helpful vantage point of hindsight.” Economists were furthermore “unaware” of the many interesting legal problems that would benefit from their insights. Even on those occasions when economists were active in a legal area, the report continued, their analysis and that of the lawyer seemed often to be “at cross-purposes,” suggesting the need for better communication between the two groups (AEA 1967b: 715).

The problem with economics, then, was largely topical: Economists needed to be more aware of legal issues and address them in timely fashion. The committee's task was to correct this by making economists aware of the large, untapped market for its insights and by making lawyers aware of the economist's product—“both in an affirmative and critical sense” (AEA 1967b: 715). Economics was to be the dominant player here, providing the tools that could inform legal analysis and the discussion of contemporary policy issues. What the study of law might offer to the economist's understanding of the workings of the economic system was left unremarked. The first report that Manne drafted for the AALS almost ten months later sounded similar notes (AALS 1967), making the message unambiguous. What remained was to elaborate a path that would end in the realization of these ambitions.

4.2. Charting a Course

To highlight the contributions that economic reasoning could make to legal analysis, the committee recommended the following experimental plan:

It was suggested that this experiment be attempted in three areas of law—“one which is currently in the process of development, one which has recently seen a major shift in the law's position, and one in which both lawyers and economists have worked for some time.” The three areas thus recommended were, respectively, criminal law, products liability, and antitrust.

Given that this was a joint committee, it is striking that this initial research effort—the monograph writing—was not envisioned as an interdisciplinary collaboration between economists and lawyers. Instead, an economist would be appointed to write each of the monographs, and they would be written over the course of a summer.¹⁹ The committee was willing to provide names of relevant law professors or lists of relevant readings, leaving the economist free to “consult with anyone as much as he wishes,” but it was explicit about its view that “a collaborative effort was not indicated” (AEA 1967b: 717; emphasis added). (In fact, Manne's initial draft read, “Not at all desirable.”)²⁰ The feeling was that, if such collaboration were allowed, “the desired critical flavor might thereby be lost.”

The interdisciplinary aspect of these ventures would commence only after each monograph had been completed. The finished product would be “distributed for comments to a prominent group of readers in both law and economics,” who would write up their responses. A conference would then be convened, consisting of about twenty invited participants, equally divided between lawyers and economists, to discuss the monograph and the appraisals. Each monograph would then be published, along with the associated appraisals and conference proceedings. It was anticipated that this experiment could cost approximately $40,000, which meant securing external funding. The committee thus requested the permission of the AEA and AALS Executive Committees to commence fundraising and, doubtless aware that their imprimaturs could be useful when approaching prospective funders, that this permission be accompanied by the removal of the committee's ad hoc status, establishing it “as a permanent standing committee of the two associations” (AEA 1967b: 717).²¹

Manne sent a draft of his report to Stigler for comments, and with Stigler's thumbs-up,²² sent it on to the AEA, informing Machlup in his covering letter that “the members of the Committee who attended the meeting expressed satisfaction with the outcome” and that their proposal was “both workable and extremely important.” The hope, he said, was that the committee would begin its work in the summer of 1967, contingent on securing the necessary funding.²³

Machlup “found the report very interesting,” noting that he would put it on the AEA Executive's agenda with his endorsement, and applauded Manne for “the expeditious way in which [he had] seen the thing through.”²⁴ That Machlup was truly keen on this effort is evident from his note to Stigler, to whom he copied his response to Manne: “You deserve our special thanks,” he said; “this looks like an excellent idea.”²⁵ From there, it was smooth sailing. Stigler presented the report to the AEA Executive Committee at its December meeting, and the Executive voted “to approve the plan recommended in the report” (AEA 1967a: 683).²⁶

It is noteworthy that the proposed program of activity, consisting solely of holding “research consultations” on what Manne had initially called “matters of mutual substantive interest,”²⁷ did not reflect the priority Manne placed on educational efforts. Yes, these monographs and “consultations” held the promise of exposing some people working in a particular area of law to the economic method, but they were hardly the large-scale transformation-through-education vehicles that Manne considered so essential to infusing economics into legal thinking. Though the details of the committee's deliberations remain a mystery, it appears that Manne had trouble bringing his colleagues around to his vision, and that it was Stigler, rather than Manne, who ultimately guided the committee to its chosen plan of action. Manne acknowledged as much in a postmeeting letter to Stigler, which said, “I want to thank you very sincerely for making that meeting a success. I suspect that without your suggestions it would have foundered mightily, perhaps doing something foolish like approving an economics school for law professors!”²⁸

Manne had in fact secured the approval of George Washington University to run a summer economics school for law professors in Washington, D.C., during the summer of 1966,²⁹ and it is not clear whether he had hoped to involve the joint committee in this effort. When the summer school plan fell through for lack of funding, he contemplated holding it the following summer at Wisconsin, where he had held a visiting professor position in the late 1950s,³⁰ but insufficient support from his former colleagues meant that this, too, never came to be. The summer school project was only realized in 1971, after Manne had moved to the University of Rochester.

5. Moving Forward, but Not without Controversy

With its standing committee status secured, Manne's next task was to select a topic for the first monograph and to identify a suitable author. He found Stigler's suggestions of Gary Becker for the crime project, Stigler himself for the products liability project, and Coase for the antitrust project—an all-Chicago cast—“exciting,” gushing that it offered the prospect of “a far more significant impact on law, legal education, and government policy than we had thought possible.”³¹ He was eager to get rolling and, knowing that having authors lined up was key for attracting funding, pressed Stigler to sound out Becker about the criminal law monograph.

5.1. Some Early Controversy

Things seemed to be going about as well as Manne could have hoped, but in early January 1967, AEA President Milton Friedman received a letter from Massel, who, as Stigler reported, apparently “blew his top” upon seeing Manne's committee report.³² Though listed as a signatory, Massel said that he could not support the committee's decisions, objecting both to the premature move from ad hoc to standing committee status and the process of drafting monographs, which he felt would be of dubious quality given the short timeline for their preparation and the lack of direct involvement by law faculty in the writing process. Massel requested that his name be removed from the report and resigned from the committee.³³ Friedman was “distressed” by Massel's letter and set out to determine which committee members had actually approved the report.³⁴ Rahl confirmed that the committee members “did not have a hand in drafting [the] report,”³⁵ but, in the end, it was published anyway, without Massel's name attached to it.³⁶

This dustup was not the only indication of discontent. A letter from Meier to his Stanford colleague and AALS President-Elect Joseph Sneed written around the same time reveals some behind-the-scenes maneuvering to steer committee membership, and thus the committee's direction, along a different course when the next set of appointments was made. Following up on their recent exchange about the committee's work, Meier offered Sneed the names of five economists who he believed “would have some real interest in the problems of the committee, show some imagination, and speak from some contact with the two disciplines (or their practitioners)”: Charles Lindblom (Yale), Carl Kaysen (Princeton), Edward Mason (Harvard), Kermit Gordon (Brookings), and Richard Musgrave (Harvard).³⁷ Each was a flavor of economist very different from the group that Manne had recruited to the committee, and certainly none could be accused of having a “Chicago school” tilt.³⁸

Meier's concerns were not confined to the committee makeup per se. He also found its topical interests “too conventional” and one-sided and wanted to push it to “explore substantive problems involving the two disciplines on a parity, and raise questions that would not otherwise be asked.”³⁹ Meier, like Manne, believed economics had much to contribute to law, but his approach to the subject, which highlighted market imperfections and potential governmental remedies, was not what Manne envisioned in the way of exporting the economics toolkit. Less than wholly pleased with the direction in which things were trending, Meier saw in Sneed a useful ally for bringing a greater variety of perspectives into the mix.

None of this disquiet seemed to have much immediate effect on the committee's work. Manne's funding inquiries had attracted the attention of the Walter E. Meyer Research Institute of Law, of which Rostow had been an initial trustee (Schlegel 1995: 244). The Meyer Institute, under the leadership of Harvard law professor David Cavers,⁴⁰ was particularly concerned with “advancing the use in law of the techniques and knowledge of the other social science disciplines” (“Walter E. Meyer” 1958: 571) and was already funding Calabresi's research on the legal and economic analysis of accidents. This, on the face of it, made the committee's project a good fit with the institute's objectives (Cavers 1997), but sealing the deal, Manne sensed, required getting a monograph author officially on board. The Meyer Institute's 1962 grant policy statement singled out crime and products liability as funding priorities (Walter E. Meyer Research Institute 1968: 22), and with no near-term prospects on the criminal front, he pressed Stigler to commit to the monograph on products liability.⁴¹ Stigler, though, was cool to the idea, both because of his existing engagements and his sensitivity to this whole thing being perceived as a sort of “inside” job. At the same time, however, he acknowledged that the paucity of economists “with interests in the application of economics to other fields” made it difficult to come up with other suitable options. He thus suggested that Manne solicit names from all committee members and gauge their preferences regarding the various possibilities—including (reluctantly) himself.⁴²

Manne's letter to the committee passed along the happy news regarding the “probable” Meyer Institute funding but also impressed upon his colleagues the need to move things along. Because the funding would be for a single monograph-cum–research consultation and a suitable author for a monograph on criminal law had not been found, Manne suggested that products liability law offered the most fruitful way forward. This area of law was “undergoing a substantial and radical change,” Manne had noted in the AEA report (AEA 1967b: 716), alluding to the growing number of products liability suits reaching the courts since the start of the 1960s. As courts increasingly held manufacturers liable for defective or dangerous products even in the absence of negligence, the American Law Institute's Restatement (Second) of Torts, adopted in 1965, extended this strict liability standard to sellers of such products (§402A), initiating a genuine revolution in the law of torts (see White 1985). These changes occurred just as the consumer movement spearheaded by Ralph Nader had succeeded in making auto and product safety more generally a matter of intense public and political debate.⁴³

Manne asked committee members for author recommendations.⁴⁴ This solicitation, however, had only limited success. As Manne told Stigler in a follow-up letter, the one reply that he received, from Meier, listed Stigler as the “first choice” to prepare the monograph, and Manne was only too happy to attribute the silence of others to “their approval.” He thus requested Stigler's permission to list him as the monograph author on the Meyer Institute application and asked him to recommend the names of “several economists who might be invited to comment on the monograph,” adding that he himself would approach the law professors on the committee for a corresponding set of names from the legal side.⁴⁵

5.2. Back on Track

On May 31, Manne informed Friedman that the Meyer Institute had agreed to provide the AEA and the AALS a grant of $11,500 to support “an interdisciplinary study” of products liability and that UCLA's Roland McKean had been enlisted to prepare the monograph on the subject.⁴⁶ Why Stigler ultimately dropped out and how Manne came to tab McKean for the job—despite the fact that McKean had no legal background and had done no work in the economic analysis of law—is unknown, though the fact that McKean had been Manne's mentor during his undergraduate days at Vanderbilt likely played a role here.⁴⁷ Regardless, McKean's task was clear: He would provide “a critique of the legal literature on this topic as well as discuss additional work that could be done by economists.”⁴⁸

Manne's report to the AALS for 1967 highlighted McKean's “reputation and writings in economic theory [that] made him eminently suited for this project,” as well as his enthusiasm for it. This left Manne brimming with optimism, believing that “if other economists can be encouraged to follow suit, this project could represent a very significant breakthrough in the development of interdisciplinary law and economics research” and open up additional funding possibilities down the road (AALS 1967: 32).⁴⁹ As McKean intended to complete the monograph in the fall of 1967, Manne noted that they were on track to hold the research consultation the following fall. Once again, however, reality got in the way of Manne's intentions.

5.3. Troubles and Transitions

On May 22, 1968, Manne wrote to Sneed, who had by this point assumed the presidency of the AALS, to announce “some damn bad luck”: A serious illness in the family had set McKean back by several months and so called into question the plans to hold the research consultation in the fall of that year. This also threw the committee appointments “somewhat out of kilter,” given that the terms of current members would expire at year's end and thus prior to the now-delayed research consultation. The eye-opening aspect of this otherwise mundane business was Manne's statement that “with one exception”—Klein—“I do not necessarily recommend reappointment of the same people.”⁵⁰ This was not the first time he had addressed the topic with Sneed, who had solicited names of potential committee appointees from Manne the previous fall. At that time, Manne had recommended Dam (Chicago), Bill Jones (Columbia), Robert Park (George Washington), Roger Cramton (Michigan), and Calabresi (Yale), as Manne reminded Sneed in his latest letter.⁵¹ Manne also noted that the committee's chairmanship should rotate to one of the economists. He favored Meier, Sneed's Stanford colleague, for the position and indicated that he would be writing to Kenneth Boulding, the AEA president-elect, to this effect that same day.

Sneed, for his part, was not entirely comfortable with the way all of this was playing out. He was already aware of Meier's discontent, but his letter to AALS President-Elect William Lockhart suggests that Meier was not alone. “There has been from time to time some criticism of the way Henry conducted his part of this show,” Sneed informed Lockhart, but he had “not been able to determine the exact reason for these murmurings.” His guess, which he emphasized was “only a guess,” was that Manne's “brand of economics does not please those of a more liberal persuasion.”⁵² Meier certainly fit that description, but it seems that the same could be said for some of the law professors on the committee.

Following Manne's recommendation,⁵³ Boulding offered Meier the committee chairmanship, effective in 1969—an offer that Meier was “glad” to accept.⁵⁴ If this hinted at a bit of change in perspective and direction, Boulding's choices for the next round of economists to join Meier in representing the AEA—Louis De Alessi (Duke), Harold Demsetz (Chicago), Richard Musgrave (Harvard), and Peter Steiner (Michigan)—provided a much clearer signal.⁵⁵ We do not know what role Meier may have played in their selection, though Musgrave was among the names he had mentioned to Sneed some months earlier, or whether Boulding had any sense for the committee and its history when making these appointments. But the change in perspective from the AEA side that they represented was striking. Though De Alessi, Manne's former George Washington colleague who had studied under Alchian at UCLA, and Demsetz were very much the type of people Manne wanted for this effort, the same could not be said of Musgrave and Steiner. Both, like Meier, had joint appointments in law schools and so had a strong interest in promoting interdisciplinary efforts. But they also, like Meier, were decidedly not in the Chicago mold. Whether Boulding's choices reflected an effort by the AEA to diversify membership is hard to say, but it is not an unreasonable conclusion to draw given Boulding's antipathy toward economics imperialism of the Chicago type (see, e.g., Boulding 1969: 8), to say nothing of his politics.

6. The “Research Consultation”

McKean completed his draft monograph in October 1968 (AALS 1968: 21), and the one-day “research consultation,” with thirty-one people in attendance (see table 1), took place at Stanford on March 18, 1969.

6.1. McKean's Monograph

It was with a mindset geared toward the systematic assessment of the efficiency of alternative allocation systems—acquired during his days at the RAND Corporation, where from 1951 to 1963 he brought economic principles to bear on governmental budgeting processes—that McKean prepared his monograph.⁵⁶ Though “fairness or equity” looms large in the choice among legal rules, he noted in the introduction that “most thoughtful persons will also be concerned with the ways in which behavior and hence resource allocation are affected” (McKean 1970: 4; emphasis added). Hence in surveying the products liability literature, his goal was to ascertain whether the economic implications of “alternative arrangements” of products liability law were being discussed “critically and carefully,” using “tested hypotheses about the consequences of alternative actions,” as opposed to “individual judgements about untested propositions.”

Being aware of his audience, McKean offered an elementary economics tutorial that laid out what he considered the basic elements of a toolkit for legal-economic analysis: cost, comparative advantage, efficiency, and Pareto optimality.⁵⁷ For McKean, the key link between these concepts and products liability was the result that Stigler (1966: 113) had labeled the “Coase theorem,” which McKean defined as follows: “If there were zero transaction costs, and if people eschewed the use of coercion or interference with voluntary exchanges, it would not matter, as far as resource allocation is concerned, how the legal rights or liabilities were initially assigned, that is, whether the purchaser or the manufacturer was liable for injuries and damages” (McKean 1970: 30). The result would be efficient in any case.

Despite its “fairly heroic” assumptions, McKean (1970: 31) considered the Coase theorem a useful “point of departure” for thinking about products liability. Its suggestion that “voluntary exchange puts risk bearing on the shoulders of the person with a comparative advantage in bearing it,” he argued, has empirical content in that, if transaction costs are sufficiently low, the appropriate combination of product safety features and user precaution could well emerge through the marketplace. McKean admitted that there was ample reason to question making efficiency concerns the law's “supreme objective,” but he was concerned that the recent move by the courts toward strict liability had failed to consider the efficiency implications—something that economics was well placed to address (36).

Though the Coase theorem implied that strict liability and caveat emptor had identical efficiency implications, McKean contended that caveat emptor offered the more efficient way forward in the real world of positive transaction costs. Customer liability, he reasoned, would make “certain transaction costs . . . relatively low,” given that “market relationships” for products allow consumers to register their preferences for safety features, safety information, and the like via their willingness to pay for these things (McKean 1970: 44). Some will prefer lower risk and higher product price, others higher risk and a lower price—and producers will adjust their behavior accordingly. In short, the competitive system gives consumers what they want, in the sense of the package of “outputs”—including risk and injury prevention—that they prefer to purchase. The same could not be said of producer liability schemes.

None of this, for McKean, demonstrated the overall superiority of caveat emptor. Instead, the crux of the matter was that the legal literature had largely ignored efficiency issues and that, with only a few exceptions, the implications of alternative legal rules were not being discussed critically or with much precision. Though he did not think equity or fairness unimportant, McKean (1970: 56) found that the legal literature emphasized them “almost to the exclusion of any other considerations,” with many legal authorities seemingly concerned with little more than which party “deserves sympathy” (58). Economic analysis was sorely needed.

6.2. The Responses

McKean having made his case, the floor passed to the four scholars—two economists, James Buchanan (UCLA) and Robert Dorfman (Harvard), and two law professors, Guido Calabresi (Yale) and Grant Gilmore (Chicago), each of significant stature in his field—enlisted to provide commentaries. No direct evidence is available to shed light on why or how these respondents were selected, but it would be hard to sustain an argument that they were picked to reinforce McKean's position. All but the Chicago-educated Buchanan recoiled at McKean's advocacy of caveat emptor, and neither Dorfman nor Gilmore saw much use for economics as a tool for either positive or normative legal analysis.

Buchanan and Calabresi (whose comment was written with his student Kenneth Bass) were in agreement with McKean on the utility of economics for legal reasoning, but they parted company on its implications for products liability law. Buchanan more or less sided with McKean by suggesting that courts should “commence with some prejudice for caveat emptor and be sophisticated in the application of departures from this principle” (Buchanan 1970: 73). Calabresi, though no stranger to either economic logic or the Coase theorem, considered transaction costs a far more significant obstacle than did McKean, calling into question the ability of markets to efficiently allocate risk. Economic reasoning, in his estimation, recommended locating liability on the manufacturer as the “cheapest cost avoider” with a “comparative advantage in safety” (Calabresi and Bass 1970: 89–90).

Buchanan's and Calabresi's optimism about the utility of economics was challenged by Dorfman and Gilmore. Dorfman, an economic theorist with a strong interest in environmental economics, was not convinced that economics had much to offer law, largely because economists and lawyers “approach problems in very different ways and with different purposes in view.” The lawyer is very much in the fray, applying “standards of ethics and justice” derived from law, while the economist stands above it, examining the consequences of particular courses of action. Economists were not wrong, he said, in feeling that lawyers employed “low standards of analytical rigor,” nor lawyers for seeing economists as “wildly impractical types,” but these were simply derivative of their professional environments (Dorfman 1970: 92–93). Dorfman also had little use for McKean's economic analysis, grounded as it was in the Coase theorem and competitive markets. This effectively ruled out the very problem—externalities—that products liability sought to address. Even more damning was his contention that the law of demand, which both he and McKean agreed is among the most important tools of economic analysis, “is largely irrelevant to predicting the effects of changing the law of products liability,” given the long odds of such accidents and the difficulties people have in processing low-probability events (101; emphasis added).⁵⁸ All in all, Dorfman had little confidence in the ability of economics to shine useful light on basic legal questions.

Gilmore, who declared that he “was known to know nothing” about either economic theory or recent legal trends concerning products liability, was even more convinced that “the Emperor had no clothes on” here (Gilmore 1970: 103).⁵⁹ Economists, he objected, could not provide answers to the questions about how cases should be decided or what statutes should be adopted that lawyers and judges were professionally required to address. The economist's reliance on simple models to deal with complex reality, of which the Coase theorem was emblematic, gave the impression that the “secular movement” that led to the expansion of the manufacturer's liability “has been a great waste of everyone's time,” and that in making judgments about the real world “we should do nothing” (106). As the products liability revolution was, at its heart, political, Gilmore saw little prospect that this could be altered by economic reasoning, or any other form of ostensibly clear thinking. Nor was he convinced that it should, noting in the ensuing group discussion that making one small piece of the law of obligations, products liability, subject to the dictates of economics would conflict with other areas of obligation and “set up intolerable strains within the legal system” (quoted in Manne 1970: 123).

The general discussion that followed revolved largely around the two major threads that emerged from the four comments—the appropriateness of caveat emptor as against manufacturer liability and the utility of economic thinking for decisions about legal questions. In both instances, the lines were drawn along rather predictable contours, with Buchanan, Stigler, Demsetz, and Alchian notably carrying the torch for the utility of both caveat emptor and McKean's brand of economic reasoning against Dorfman, Musgrave, Steiner, and the legal scholars (save for Calabresi).⁶⁰ Divergent views about the ability of the market to generate appropriate levels of information about product characteristics and dangers, and of consumers, government, and judges to acquire and respond appropriately to the information, featured prominently, with no small amount of the debate centering on the utility of the Coase theorem as a tool for legal-economic analysis.

Despite the qualms expressed by a number of the participants about the insights to be drawn from and the appropriateness of applying economics to these issues, Manne and Meier (1970: 2) came away from the conference believing that “most of the participants seemed to feel that desirable legal effects would ultimately flow from sound economic analysis,” and expressed the hope that “the exercise published here will have intellectual influence well beyond the small question of what a judge may do with his next products liability case.”

7. The Aftermath

The committee's reports for 1969, transmitted to the AEA and the AALS and published in their respective Proceedings, are more interesting for their contrasts than for their similarities. Both briefly cover the research consultation, but the AALS report, presumably authored by Manne, was more effusively positive, twice referring to the products liability conference as “extremely successful” and suggesting that “several publishers” were jockeying to publish the proceedings (AALS 1969: 17). The AEA report, written by Meier, differed in more than tone, however, speaking of a “desire to go beyond” the organization of research consultations to “have an eventual impact on some forms of curriculum revision in Schools of Law and possibly also Economics Departments.” The report accordingly proposed “a special meeting of economists who teach in Law Schools,” targeted at “sharing their common problems and noting some opportunities,” and for which AEA and AALS support might be requested (AEA 1970: 518).⁶¹ Both reports also mentioned plans, formulated when the committee met immediately prior to the Stanford gathering, to have another research consultation the following year. An economist had been tentatively chosen to prepare a monograph on the topic of “property rights in non-patentable and non-copyrightable ideas” (AALS 1969: 17), but the Meyer Institute's announcement of a moratorium on research support while undergoing reorganization meant that this and any future activities were contingent on identifying a new source of funding (AEA 1970: 518).⁶²

Despite the optimism suggested by these reports, there were no additional meetings or activities scheduled and no agenda being overtly pursued beyond securing a publication outlet for the products liability proceedings. And even this proved to be much more difficult than Manne had anticipated. Though the committee was originally interested in publishing the proceedings as a book, no offers were apparently forthcoming, and they eventually settled on the University of Chicago Law Review, which agreed to publish the material in its Autumn 1970 issue.⁶³ Such was the state of affairs that Musgrave, by this time the committee's incoming economics cochair, was under the impression that the proceedings would not be published—learning otherwise when Meier mentioned it to him only weeks before publication.⁶⁴

Interestingly, Cavers, though present at Stanford, elected not to include a discussion of the joint committee in his review of the Meyer Institute's grant-making history (Cavers 1997). This may have been a bit of buyer's remorse—ironic, given the focus on caveat emptor—in that the Meyer Institute's grant program, and Cavers himself, were instrumental in the development of the “law and society” movement, which sought to apply the concepts and methodologies of sociology and anthropology to the study of legal phenomena and came to be defined in part by its opposition to Chicago-style economic analysis of law.

7.1. Organizational Follies

The products liability conference was the high-water mark of the committee's efforts, after which it began a slide into oblivion. The lack of funding to support a second research consultation or any other activities was clearly a barrier,⁶⁵ and efforts made by Manne and Dam to secure additional funding, including an entreaty to the Koch Foundation with Alchian dangled as the likely monograph author, were unsuccessful.⁶⁶ The real culprit, though, was the diversion of Manne's attention to other, education-related entrepreneurial activities at the University of Rochester, where he had moved in 1968 to set up a new economics-oriented law school and was preparing to run his long-contemplated summer economics school for law professors.

The turn of the calendar to 1970 brought new leadership to the committee, with Musgrave and Dam taking over as cochairs—the former on Meier's recommendation.⁶⁷ This new blood came at the cost of missionary zeal for the cause and the influence of perspectives that did not reflect Manne's vision. The result was a committee in complete disarray, plagued by ineffective leadership, uncertainty about membership, and an overall lack of interest in the effort. The AEA and AALS records show that neither society had a clear sense of what the committee was about, nor did either ensure that, as a standing committee of each society, it actually carried out a program of activities consistent with the mission they had endorsed.⁶⁸ And with the growing number of economists being appointed to law faculties, the AALS was questioning whether a joint committee was even necessary at this point.⁶⁹

7.2. The Emperor Changes Clothes

The appointment of Dam and Musgrave as cochairs virtually assured that there would be difficulties. Though both had been committee members since 1968, their perspectives, in terms of both brand of economics and ideology, were radically different.

In early August of 1970, Musgrave received a two-page letter from Dam, copied to Meier, reporting on the committee's business and seeking Musgrave's advice on next steps.⁷⁰ No suitable monograph author had been found for the second research consultation dealing with property rights in nonpatentable and noncopyrightable ideas, and Dam suggested that a study of educational vouchers might be a good replacement. The vouchers subject, he said, was at once topical and of interest to both lawyers and economists. And, as an added benefit, Dam indicated that the Koch Foundation, with whom both he and Manne had been in correspondence, “might be willing to underwrite” it, given the foundation's “strong interest in educational problems, and in particular in private schools.”⁷¹

Meier, for his part, was very leery about the idea of a conference on vouchers financed by the Koch Foundation. Though professing ignorance of the foundation's activities, he noted that its literature, pieces of which he sent along to Musgrave, “does seem to be strongly private school oriented,” and that “it definitely has an interest in strengthening these schools, while criticizing the public schools.” Given this, he said, any contemplated funding relationship “should be cleared with” the AEA.⁷²

But Meier's concerns went well beyond the selection of topics and funders. “As you know,” he continued, “the history of the Joint Committee is very much ‘Chicago-oriented.’” He saw his own role as that of trying to “represent the ‘silent majority’ within the economics profession more adequately.” He was convinced that “this could be an important committee if its activities were broadened, and if it escaped the Chicago mold.” Meier had been unable to accomplish this, but his recommendation of Musgrave—rather than, say, Stigler—as his replacement was almost certainly driven by the hope that Musgrave could do more along those lines.

Though emphatic about his displeasure with the committee's orientation, Meier's letter also contains a clue as to why he seems not to have pushed back more forcefully against Manne's efforts or, like Massel, parted company with the committee. Despite their differing perspectives, Meier and Manne shared a deep-seated desire for bringing more economics—albeit not exactly the same brand of it—to bear on legal scholarship and education. This goal, at the heart of Manne's original proposal, is echoed in Meier's 1969 report to the AEA and his suggestion to Musgrave that the committee move “beyond simply research consultation meetings” and appeal to the National Science Foundation (NSF) or some similar organization “for substantial support that would have an impact on curriculum within the Law Schools and Economics Departments.”⁷³

If Musgrave was inclined toward a dim view of Dam's suggestions, Meier's letter only reinforced those priors. Musgrave pronounced himself “not very enthusiastic” about the topic of vouchers, as it was both highly “specialized” and involved “much the same type of economic reasoning” as the first conference. He also objected to having an economist author the second monograph, arguing instead for a lawyer or a lawyer-economist team. “At the Stanford Conference,” he noted, “the discussion was conducted almost entirely by economists, or more correctly, in terms of the economist's approach.” This, he argued, did not serve “the purpose of cross-fertilization between law and economics as well as it should,” so he was “anxious to have a more balanced presentation and pattern of discussion at the next meeting.”⁷⁴ The “balance” Musgrave sought was exactly what Manne had wanted to avoid, on the grounds that it risked soft-pedaling the insights and much-needed alterations of perspective economics could bring to the conversation.

If Dam thought that Musgrave would welcome the vouchers proposal, he was wide of the mark. Musgrave had, after all, pioneered and championed the economic analysis of public and merit goods, such as education, as well as the need for a strong state hand in ensuring their adequate provision (Desmarais-Tremblay 2017). But even apart from his own “prejudices,” Musgrave was concerned that “a discussion of the voucher plan might involve us in a basic debate about cultural and educational objectives which are not in the area of technical competence for either lawyers or economists.” Perhaps motivated by his recent tenure on Harvard's standing committee on an Afro-American studies department, Musgrave proposed the topic of discrimination, which he found at once “more exciting,” amenable to analysis from a variety of angles (e.g., housing, zoning, employment), and “of considerable importance” in both legal and economic senses. Though cool to the idea of seeking funding from the Koch Foundation, Musgrave was optimistic about the prospect of attracting long-term support from the NSF and suggested that they meet in Chicago when he passed through in early October to “get acquainted and exchange our ideas” on next steps.⁷⁵

Alas, there is no record of any progress, almost certainly because little if any real progress was made. Dam's appointment as assistant director for national security and international affairs at the Office of Management and Budget in the spring of 1971 led him to suspend his academic activities, and AALS President-Elect Alfred Conard of Michigan tabbed Chicago's Richard Posner to fill out Dam's term. Noting that Dam and Musgrave had “some projects cooking,” Conard expressed to the committee his hope that Musgrave and Posner would “keep the pot boiling.”⁷⁶ If the pot had indeed been “boiling,” Dam's resignation effectively threw water on the fire.

8. A Last Gasp

The 1972 reorganization of the AALS brought with it the creation of a section named “Law and Economics,” the stated purpose of which was to “promote economic analysis of law and legal institutions, to encourage its proper use in legal education, to facilitate exchange of ideas, discussions and activities among members, and to make recommendations on teaching and improvement of the law.”⁷⁷ With the AEA doing nothing and the AALS going its own way, the joint committee seemed to be on life support. But one final chance for survival presented itself in the early summer of 1973, when Musgrave stepped down as cochair. AEA President Kenneth Arrow, charged with appointing his replacement, did not have an overly positive view of the committee's efforts to date. Arrow's first two solicitations went to Steiner and Meier, no fans of Manne's approach, his letter to Steiner expressing the “hope” that he would “broaden the orientation” of the conferences.⁷⁸ When Steiner and Meier declined his entreaties, Arrow turned to Stigler, who readily agreed.⁷⁹ Though he was happy to have this little problem solved, Arrow, doubtless with the products liability conference in mind, expressed to Stigler his hope that “the activity of the Committee not consist entirely in following up the implications of the Coase theorem.” “This is indeed a vital and important line of work,” Arrow smirked, “but clearly there must be other aspects of legal-economic interaction.”⁸⁰

With Stigler in the chair and Yale's Alvin Klevorick tabbed to fill Musgrave's slot on the AEA side, it seemed that the committee was back in business. Stigler wasted little time in attempting to jump-start it, soliciting the input of the economist members about the committee's next steps.⁸¹ However, only one of the several respondents, De Alessi, echoed Stigler's enthusiasm for the cause. When Stigler dutifully reported the economists’ lukewarm reactions to his AALS counterpart, William Lovett, he all but made clear that any initiative would need to come from the AALS side. In short, Stigler himself had little interest in doing the heavy lifting here despite his enthusiasm for the cause.⁸²

Though Manne was by that point departing Rochester for Miami to set up the first law and economics center in the country, and so hip-deep in other entrepreneurial efforts, his original missionary foray was not far from his mind. Writing to Lovett only a few weeks after Stigler had signaled the AEA's position, he pitched the idea of an AALS conference session titled, “Is Economics Valuable in Law?” This was a subject that Stigler had suggested for a second research consultation;⁸³ it was also, as the title implies, much closer to Manne's own interests in legal-economic education. Manne's plan was to bring in present and former committee members, as well as some fresh blood, and he was even open to discussing whether the AALS Law and Economics section, of which he had just become the chairman-elect, should attempt to establish “a formal arrangement with the AEA.”⁸⁴ It is apparent, then, that both the AALS section and Manne were moving ahead on their own. And when Manne's proposed session did not materialize, any remaining prospects for renewed engagement with the AEA seemed to have faded away.

9. Dying Quietly

On January 16, 1975, AEA Secretary-Treasurer Rendigs Fels wrote to Stigler at the request of AEA President Aaron Gordon to inquire about the joint committee's status.⁸⁵ When Stigler finally responded to this query nearly two years later in a letter to Fels's successor, Elton Hinshaw, his earlier optimism had disappeared. The committee, Stigler said, had been “inactive for some years,” and his “overtures to the chairman-elect several years ago (Henry Manne) revealed no viable joint activities.” “The committee,” he concluded, “should therefore be discharged or reconstituted.”⁸⁶ Hinshaw thanked Stigler for his report, noting that he would forward it to AEA President Franco Modigliani “with the recommendation that the committee be discharged.”⁸⁷

The end came with little fanfare. On January 24, 1977, Hinshaw sent a brief letter to Millard Ruud, the executive director of the AALS, noting that the committee “seems to have been inactive for several years and may have outlived its usefulness.” As such, he continued, “the AEA is willing to allow it to die quietly if the AALS concurs.”⁸⁸ Ruud responded only days later, saying that Hinshaw's suggestion that the committee “be allowed to die quietly makes sense.”⁸⁹ And die quietly it did, with Hinshaw writing to Stigler, Meier, Steiner, and Klevorick to thank them for their service in letters that made no mention of the committee's demise.⁹⁰

Ironically, and channeling Massel's early objection to Manne's agenda, Ruud's response to Hinshaw went on to suggest that, in the future, “the more effective way to deal with our common interests is to establish ad hoc committees from time to time to work on special joint projects as they arise.”⁹¹ Then again, if “common interests” and “joint projects” had been part of the committee's raison d’être from the get-go, it might have been something other than a failed start-up venture early on along Manne's entrepreneurial trail.

10. Conclusion: Lessons Learned

If Manne's goal was to engineer a “scientific revolution” wherein his preferred brand of economic analysis came to dominate important aspects of legal thinking and decision-making, the AEA-AALS joint committee was a full-on failure. But why? Though the lack of funding for a second research consultation slowed whatever momentum the committee had, its demise owed to far more than this. The most significant problem was the collective nature of the endeavor and the fact that no one, save for Manne, was deeply invested in this effort. Yes, the committee members shared an interest in the growth of something vaguely described as “law and economics.” But their varying perspectives on it, visions for it, and willingness to dig in to promote either a new field of research or, on even a larger scale, a reformation within legal thinking, did not, and no doubt could not, add up to the level of mobilization needed to realize Manne's vision. Even the merry band of Chicago school economists—of both Hyde Park and University of Chicago at Los Angeles stripes—that Manne enlisted to support his cause did not exactly put their weight behind the effort. While doubtless interested in seeing the regulatory environment revamped along lines they found more congenial, they were content to let Manne—the legal scholar—row the boat while they took in the view. Empires are not built by free riders.

The disinterest of the AEA and the AALS leadership may also have played some small role in the committee's fizzling, but one gets a sense that this is how Manne wanted things—to be flying under the radar and free to operate as he saw fit. The problem, of course, is that success required ongoing institutional and financial support, and the joint committee setup did not really offer that, at least not in a way that would give Manne a free hand to pursue his goals. It is certainly safe to say that the AEA and the AALS would have had little interest in throwing their weight behind an effort to remake vast swaths of law in the image of Chicago (or any other) economics, the efforts by these associations to diversify the range of perspectives on the committee serving as evidence for this.⁹² When you put these various pieces together, you have a recipe for exactly what did, and did not, transpire.

The committee's post-1969 history makes crystal clear the extent to which the entire effort had been Manne's show.⁹³ Once he was no longer controlling the process and driving it forward, including by putting together a set of committee members with a strong interest in the goals he was championing, all momentum was lost. It was not so much that Manne was the “glue” that held things together as that Manne was the committee during his period of active engagement. He drove the agenda—even if it was not always exactly what he wanted, as evidenced by the lack of success in getting the committee to devote attention to legal education—saw to the administration of the committee's affairs, and kept the committee on the radars of the AEA and AALS, not least through his efforts relating to the appointments of committee members during the late 1960s.

If the story of Manne's influence on the development of law and economics ended here, it would be tempting to conclude that “a single zealot does not a revolution make.” Of course, the story does not end here, and Manne would soon give the lie to that conclusion, his later entrepreneurial efforts informed by the successes and failures of this initial excursion. In particular, the reservations about the usefulness of economics to address legal issues expressed by Gilmore and other law professors at the Stanford conference confirmed in Manne's mind that it was essential to train law professors in what he viewed as sound economics. And the need for an independent organizational vehicle, one that he was able to control and that was capable of attracting regular, as opposed to ad hoc, funding, was also evident. Manne's ill-fated attempt to set up an economics-oriented law school at the University of Rochester was an effort to address these issues. The subsequent establishment of the Law and Economics Center at the University of Miami provided the type of organizational environment in which a one-man-driven show could succeed, and the result was a well-funded effort featuring a variety of educational and research programs, with transformative effects.

Comments and information provided by Bruce Caldwell, Louis De Alessi, Maxime Desmarais-Tremblay, Kevin Hoover, Alvin Klevorick, Alain Marciano, Elizabeth Popp Berman, and Amos Witztum, and participants in the workshops titled “Interdisciplinary Social Science” and “Transforming Homo Economicus” at ENS-Saclay, the fifty-second THETS conference at Cambridge University, and the seminar series at the Center for the History of Political Economy at Duke University are gratefully acknowledged. The authors wish to thank the staff members at the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center at the University of Chicago Library, the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University, the Archives Research Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University for their assistance with the various archival collections referenced in this study. Medema gratefully acknowledges the financial support provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

Notes

References