Reflections from the Age of Economic Measurement

Offers a chronological history of the age of economic measurement via the use of six events that demonstrate the "bridges between commercial, political, & scientific arithmetics" (Klein, 1997): (1) William Playfair's (1786) analysis of the decline of nations in terms of their commercial strength; (2) Johann Heinrich von Thunen's (1826) notion of the geometric landscape, considered an early masterpiece in deductive reasoning & optimization methods; (3) studies of the "dark days" of the English economy compiled by the Manchester Statistical Society across the mid-1800s; (4) the popularization of statistics & new methods of social & economic measurement in the turn-of-the-century US; (5) Joseph Kitchin's charting of the history of trade cycles, 1783-1920, using time-series analysis; & (6) George Dantzig's (1963) schematic diagram of chronological influences on linear programming & the simplex method. Each of these developments is located within its larger social, economic, & political contexts. 6 Figures, 48 References. K. Hyatt Stewart