Planting the Seeds of a Chicago Tradition

Beginning sometime in the 1930s, the economics profession essentially abandoned the Classical Liberal methodology that we explored in the last chapter. In this and the next four chapters we consider that abandonment by using the University of Chicago as a case study. In this chapter we return to the beginning of economics at the University of Chicago in order to explore the development of a Chicago tradition. Then in the next chapters we consider how that original Chicago tradition evolved into the postwar Chicago School of economics. The Chicago tradition begins with James Laughlin, the first chair and founder of