Frank W. Taussig's Institutionalism

Just as scholars of an institutionalist persuasion-particularly in the area of contemporary evolutionary economics-have "discovered" Alfred Marshall's heterodox leanings, Frank W. 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. The intellectual genesis of this paper was an assessment of Taussig's thought offered by Schumpeter (1966), who was Taussig's colleague for almost all of the final decade of the latter's life, and also a more recent assessment of Taussig by Samuels (1988, 1989).