Journal of Economic Perspectives—Volume 23, Number 1—Winter 2009—Pages 221–

233

Retrospectives
On the Definition of Economics

Roger E. Backhouse and Steven G.

Medema

This feature addresses the history of economic terms and ideas. The hope is
to deepen the workaday dialogue of economists, while perhaps also casting new
light on ongoing questions. If you have suggestions for future topics or authors,
please contact Joseph Persky, Professor of Economics, University of Illinois,
Chicago, at [email protected] .

Introduction

Economists are far from unanimous about the definition of their subject.
Here are some definitions of economics from contemporary principles of
economics textbooks:

Economics is the study of economies, at both the level of individuals

and of society as a whole (Krugman and Wells, 2004, p. 2).

Economics is the study of how human beings coordinate their wants

and desires, given the decision-making mechanisms, social customs, and
political realities of the society (Colander, 2006a, p. 4).

Roger E. Backhouse is Professor of the History and Philosophy of Economics,

y
University of
Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, United Kingdom. Steven G.
Medema, is Professor of Economics, University of Colorado Denver, Denver,
Colorado. Their e-mail addresses are [email protected] and
[email protected] .
222 Journal of Economic Perspectives

Economics is the study of how society manages its scarce resources

(Mankiw, 2001, p. 4).

[Economics is the] social science that studies the choices that

individuals, businesses, governments, and entire societies make as they
cope with scarcity (Bade and Parkin, 2002, p. 5).

[E]conomics is the study of human behavior, with a particular focus on

human decision making (Gwartney, Stroup, Sobel, and MacPherson 2006,
p. 5).

Thus, economics is apparently the study of the economy, the study of the coordi
nation process, the study of the effects of scarcity, the science of choice, and the
study of human behavior.
One possible conclusion to draw from this lack of agreement is that the
definition of economics does not really matter. After all, the textbooks including
these definitions are all fairly mainstream and quite similar in many ways.
Perhaps the definition of economics is best viewed as a tool for the first day of
principles classes but otherwise of little concern to practicing economists.
Another possible conclusion is that the subject of economics is too broad to be
usefully pinned down in a short definition. Richard Lipsey, for example, refused to
define the subject in his widely used textbook, An Introduction to Positive
Economics (1963), but instead gave a series of examples of economic problems,
thereby suggesting a broader discipline than could be encompassed in any
singular definition. Jacob Viner reflected this spirit in his oft-quoted statement:
“Economics is what economists do.” (We have been unable to find this statement
in Viner’s publications, but a remark by Kenneth Boulding (1941, p. 1), a student
of Viner’s in 1932–3, suggests that it arose in conversation.)
We sympathize with Viner’s quip. Economics is potentially very broad;
indeed, it has become increasingly broad over the past 200 years. Attempts to
pin down the subject in a few words are thus almost certainly doomed to failure.
Viner suggests that actions are more important than definitions. However, we
also believe that definitions of economics are important. Definitions of economics
have often helped to convey what economists see as legitimate problems for
economic analysis, as well as the methods of analysis, approach, and techniques
they consider appropriate for doing economics. As these have evolved over time,
it is not surprising that the definition of economics has also changed.

Early Definitions: National Wealth and Human Behavior

 For the classical economists, political economy was about national wealth
and economic growth. The Greek writer Xenophon had invented the term
“economics”
Roger E. Backhouse and Steven G. Medema 223

in the fourth century BCE, using it to refer to the art of household management, a
meaning of the word “economy” that is still active today. Adding the word
“political” reflected a sense that this problem could be extended to the level of
nations. Some two millennia later, Adam Smith described political economy as “a
branch of the science of a statesman or legislator,” and his Inquiry into the
Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776 [1976], p. 428) explained the
relative fortunes of different countries, as well as the policies that might “enrich
both the people and the sovereign.”
In the early nineteenth century, this wealth-based definition was sharpened
in several ways. As Britain’s industrial revolution unfolded and the outlines of
indus trial capitalism began to emerge, economics began to reach beyond the
issue of increasing wealth, with the more broad-based emphasis being captured
in Jean Baptiste Say’s (1803) definition of political economy as the “science” that
treats “the production, distribution, and consumption of wealth.” The study of
political econ omy that emerged in the early decades of the nineteenth century
was philosophi cally narrower in scope than found in the analysis of Smith, who
after all was once a professor of “moral philosophy” (Fontaine, 1996; Winch,
1996; Rothschild, 2001). Where Adam Smith’s work was only one facet of a
larger system of moral philoso phy and so cannot be understood apart from his
concern with morality and with society as a whole, the generation of Say and
David Ricardo (1817) saw themselves as creating a new and separate science of
political economy.
Although political economy continued to be defined by its subject matter
throughout the classical period (O’Brien, 2004), the definitions given began to hint
at a methodological approach. For example, John Stuart Mill (1844 [1967], p.
323) defined political economy in this way: “The science which traces the laws of
such of the phenomena of society as arise from the combined operations of
mankind for the production of wealth, in so far as those phenomena are not
modified by the pursuit of any other object.” Here, Mill defined the subject as
dealing with the results of certain motives, thereby linking it to the methods that
were appropriate for it, and categorizing other motivations as outside of political
economy. But his definitions of these motives were tied to a specific subject
matter—wealth. In Mill’s view, the accumulation of wealth depended on certain
laws that were known to be true, like the law of diminishing returns and the
“population principle”—that population would multiply faster than food supply.
Even though these laws were known to be true, they were to be regarded as only
statements of tendencies, for what Mill (1844 [1967], p. 330) called “disturbing
causes” might interfere with their operation. The Millian method of political
economy centered on logical deduction from these known premises, although
historical investigation was needed to estab lish the applicability of any laws so
discovered.
But the discussion of wealth did not always take place at the national level:
some nineteenth-century definitions began to bring in the individualistic element.
For example, if wealth was made up of exchangeable value, then perhaps
exchange, not wealth, is the fundamental phenomenon. This insight implied that
political
224 Journal of Economic Perspectives

economy was concerned with the interaction of individuals within a larger social
context. Richard Whately (1832) went so far as to propose renaming the subject
“catallactics”—the science of exchanges. Wealth-based definitions of the subject
continued to dominate, but the idea of catallactics did not disappear: in the
modern era, Ludwig von Mises (1949, p. 3), F. A. Hayek (1976, pp. 108 –109),
and James Buchanan (1964, p. 217) have argued the case for a definition
grounded in catallactics.
The individualistic element came even more to the fore towards the later part
of the nineteenth century, when political economy saw the rise of definitions of
economics focusing more on human behavior than on the concept of wealth
accumulation. Carl Menger (1871 [1976], p. 48) said that economics is “related to
the practical activities of economizing men.” While Menger eschewed references
to the motivation for economizing, for some economists, such as William Stanley
Jevons and Alfred Marshall, this change of definitional focus was influenced by
their view that psychology was needed to understand economic phenomena. In
economic theory, the change was marked by explanation in terms of utility— both
as a description of how choices are made and as a welfare criterion. This
perspective is reflected in Jevons’s (1871 [1965], p. vi) depiction of economics as
“a calculus of pleasure and pain.” This focus on utility, whether as a welfare
judgment or frame work for thinking about choices, suggested a move toward
individualism and away from the emphasis on wealth that had dominated classical
thinking. Indeed, even those, such as Henry Sidgwick (1901), who held to the
older wealth-based defini tion of the subject, often used utility-related concepts of
well-being rather than material wealth in its traditional sense.
These changes are the background to the definition of economics made
famous by Alfred Marshall. In what became the dominant treatment of the
subject, his Principles of Economics, Marshall (1890 [1920], 1.1.1–2) wrote:

Political Economy or Economics is a study of mankind in the ordinary

business of life; it examines that part of individual and social action which is
most closely connected with the attainment and with the use of the material
requisites of wellbeing.... Thus it is on the one side a study of wealth; and
on the other, and more important side, a part of the study of man.

This definition was a significant shift, for Marshall was claiming that economics
was primarily a “study of man.” Not only did Marshall study individuals’ actions,
but he also attached importance to the way human character evolved in response
to the environments people faced and the choices they made, considerations
generally absent from modern economics (Raffaelli, 2006). The individualistic
element was even more clearly at the center of the approach of the Austrians and
others influenced by them, such as Knut Wicksell (1901 [1934]) and Philip
Wicksteed (1910), who believed that economics was about economizing—the
elimination of waste in the administration of resources.
Retrospectives: On the Definition of Economics 225

Marshall’s definition also marks a time when the word “economics” was dis
placing “political economy” as the favored name for the subject. Knut Wicksell
(1901 [1934], pp. 1–2) argued that, as decisions are taken by individuals (there
being no such thing as the national household), the term “political economy” was
not appropriate—although Wicksell apparently did not use the new term “econom
ics,” either. Wicksteed (1910, p. 17), too, felt that “political” no longer fit the
practice of economists, who were examining “the general principles of administra
tion of resources, whether of an individual, a household, a business, or a State.”
For Alfred Marshall, the main supporter of the term “economics,” this renaming of
the subject was part of establishing economics as a professional, scientific field,
which meant distancing it from direct political involvement and an ideological
commit ment to laissez-faire that had become associated in the minds of some
with the term “political economy.”

The Robbins Definition: Scarcity

Perhaps the most common currently accepted definition of economics stems

from Lionel Robbins’s Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic
Science (1932 [1935]), where Robbins (p. 15 [p. 16]) defined economics as “the
science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and
scarce means which have alternative uses.” Robbins claimed that his definition
did no more than sum up the way economists thought about and practiced their
discipline, but actually his definition was very much a minority view at the time. Of
the various textbooks offering definitions of the subject in the first three decades
of the century, only Fetter (1915) and Fairchild, Furniss, and Buck (1926)—the
latter of whom identi fied “the insatiability of man and the niggardliness of nature”
(p. 8) as the foundation of economics— came close to the definition offered by
Robbins.
The Robbins definition of economics was criticized both for being too broad
and for being too narrow. It was considered too broad in that it failed to divide
economics sufficiently from other social sciences. But it was also said to be
overly narrow in that it was too heavily tilted toward theory and left little, if any,
room for empirical analysis, history, and institutions—and it essentially wrote
ethics out of economics.
The textbooks of the 1920s and 1930s confirm that economists were
reluctant to accept the Robbins definition (Backhouse and Medema,
forthcoming). In England, Marshall’s definition remained as dominant as his text.
In the United States, one could find leading texts arguing that economics was
about “the wealth getting and wealth-using activities of Man” (Ely, Adams,
Lorenz, and Young, 1926) and that no definition was required (Taussig, 1927).
This time period was the heyday of Institutionalism, a broad movement
emphasizing empirical work and skeptical of abstract theories about maximizing
individuals. A typical institutionalist definition of economics is found in a textbook
by the Harvard labor economist
226 Journal of Economic Perspectives

Sumner Slichter (1931, p. 11): “The subject matter of economics is industry, the
process by which men get a living... economics studies industry, not as a techno
logical process, but as a complex of human practices and relationships.” This
definition, clearly influenced by Thorstein Veblen, covered Slichter’s own work on
labor, as well as John R. Commons’s analysis of legal history; Wesley Clair
Mitchell’s quantitative work on wealth, income distribution, and the cycle at the
National Bureau of Economic Research; and Gardner Means’s analysis of the
corporation and what he called administered pricing. Slichter’s definition has
some echoes of Alfred Marshall’s, but the emphasis on the social organization of
industry implies a somewhat different perspective.
If the Institutionalists were an example of those who saw the Robbins
definition as too narrow, other textbooks saw it as too broad. Frank Knight’s
(1933) The Economic Organization, which along with Marshall’s Principles was
the foundation of Chicago price theory from the 1920s, said (p. 4) that economics
“deals with the social organization of economic activity” via the price system or
under free enterprise. Knight considered the definitions given by Marshall and
Robbins too broad, and even “useless and mislead ing,” arguing that
economizing behavior has a fairly narrow scope in the larger spectrum of human
action. Indeed, Knight thought in the 1920s (!) that economists tended to apply
the concept of rationality to far too broad a range of activities.
Robbins’s (1932) definition reflected the focus on analyzing individual behav
ior that had accompanied the development of marginalist microeconomic
analysis. Yet, while scarcity definitions made their occasional appearance in new
textbooks published after Robbins’s Essay, definitions emphasizing wealth and
exchange remained dominant, and books employing these older definitions did
not move toward the scarcity definition when they were revised.
The professional journal literature in economics in the post–World War II
years offered at least four definitions of economics, all drawing on themes
mentioned earlier: 1) the Vineresque “economics is what economics does”; 2) a
Robbins-style definition based on scarcity; 3) a definition in terms of wealth
(which was seen as consistent with a belief in the centrality of scarcity); and 4) a
definition of economics as concerned with the subject of rationality (Parsons,
1937, pp. 757–75; Spengler, 1948, pp. 2–3). By 1960, one could still find
references critical of the Robbins definition in the journal literature, but most of
these were by economists who questioned the direction in which economics was
moving. Within the mainstream, Harry Johnson (1960, p. 552) allowed that most
economists “would probably accept” the Robbins definition, “at least as a
description of their workaday activities.”
The gradual movement toward broader acceptance of the Robbins definition
after World War II reflects an economics that was becoming narrower and more
technical. During the war, many economists had worked alongside scientists and
engineers, solving urgent practical problems (including logistics and military
tactics and strategy). The Cold War continued this process, with much work on
game theory and operations research being sponsored by the U.S. Navy and the
Air Force, the latter often being
Roger E. Backhouse and Steven G. Medema 227

linked to RAND. In the early 1950s, the only unambiguous endorsements of the
Robbins definition in the journal literature were by members of the Cowles
Commis sion, the center of work on general equilibrium modeling. But by the end
of the 1960s, when mathematical methods—including the axiomatic approach—
were much more pervasive, this definition had become widely accepted.
By the late 1960s and into the 1970s, the textbook literature had shifted
toward Robbins-style scarcity-based definitions, too. In the first edition of his
Economics, Paul Samuelson (1948) did not offer a definition of the subject. His
statement that economics deals with questions of “What?” “How?” and “For
Whom?” resonated equally with scarcity definitions and definitions emphasizing
the production and distribution of wealth. That Samuelson’s focus was on the
social level rather than on individual behavior (individual choice at the level of the
consumer and the firm gets 90 pages near the end of this 600-page edition from
1948) is not surprising, given the still all-too-fresh memories of the Great
Depression and the war-time emphasis on administering the national economy.
Some two decades latter, Camp bell McConnell’s (1960, p. 23) text, like
Samuelson’s, still defined economics as a subject very much focused on choice
at the social level: “Recalling that wants are unlimited and resources are scarce,
economics can be defined as the social science concerned with the problem of
using or administering scarce resources (the means of produc ing) so as to attain
the greatest or maximum fulfillment of our unlimited wants (the goal of
producing).” By Samuelson’s tenth edition in 1976, however, he was offering an
expansive definition of the subject based upon his original three questions, and
dealing explicitly with both individual and social choices (Samuelson and Temin,
1976, p. 3): “Economics is the study of how people and society end up choosing,
with or without the use of money, to employ scarce productive resources that
could have alternative uses, to produce various commodities and distribute them
for consumption, now or in the future, among various persons and groups in
society. It analyzes the costs and benefits of improving patterns of resource
allocation.”

The Evolving Relationship between Scarcity and Choice

The Robbins definition of economics may seem straightforward, but it has

been interpreted in different ways. For example, consider the relationship
between scarcity and choice. The idea that scarcity implies choice, which in turn
takes place through a process of rational maximization, is common currency in
contemporary economics. Even critics of rationality often advocate bounded
rationality rather than rejecting the idea of rationality altogether. But these links
were not always so overt. There can be no question that the Robbins definition
put scarcity at center stage, and that scarcity, in turn, creates a resource
allocation and distribution problem. However, the fact that scarcity makes choice
necessary does not imply either that economics need focus on the process of
individual choice, nor that such choice need be rational. Positive prices are the
result of scarcity, and from this
228 Journal of Economic Perspectives

comes the analysis of markets and other allocation mechanisms. Growth and
development are about overcoming the problem of scarcity, and even Keynesian
macroeconomics can be seen as about avoiding the waste of scarce resources.
But all of this analysis at both the micro and macro levels can be—and has been
— done with or without rational-choice underpinnings.
The scarcity definition of economics thus left space for economists to see the
subject in different ways. Milton Friedman adopted a scarcity-based definition of
economics in his famous Chicago price theory lectures as early as the mid-
1940s, calling economics “the science of how a particular society solves its
economic problems,” where “An economic problem exists whenever scarce
means are used to satisfy alternative ends” (Friedman, 1962, p. 6; see also
Johnson, 1947 [2008]). This definition contains no mention of rationality or of
maximizing behavior; indeed, Friedman did not find it necessary to ground his
analysis of demand in any theory of human behavior (Mirowski and Hands,
1998). Friedman’s (1953) methodolog ical view was that economics is simply
about observed behavior, irrespective of what causes that behavior. In this
argument, utility maximization is no more than a hypothesis for predicting
behavior.
The move toward a greater emphasis on the choice process began in the
1940s, though it really did not pick up steam until the 1950s and 1960s. George
Stigler (1942, p. 12, emphasis added) took matters a step further than Friedman
when he wedded maximization to scarcity, defining economics as “the study of
the principles governing the allocation of scarce resources among competing
ends when the objective of the allocation is to maximize the attainment of the
ends.” The notion of economics as a study of maximization under constraints was
also at the center of Paul Samuelson’s (1947) Foundations of Economic
Analysis, though Samuelson did not provide a definition of the subject there.
In contrast, Kenneth Arrow (1951, 1959), and others who favored an
axiomatic approach to economic theory, focused on rational action, which they
explicitly distanced from utility maximization subject to a budget constraint and
the various limitations that it posed as a theory of choice. Rationality is a more
encompassing notion than maximization—for example, it also extends to the
analysis of situations facing principals and agents. Game theory makes strong
demands on rationality, as does the concept of rational expectations. Rational
preferences in this view were not assumed to be self-interested—though they
could be— but simply complete and transitive (Giocoli, 2003; see also Arrow’s
comments in Amadae, 2003, p. 230). The larger point to be taken here, though,
is that this approach reflected an emphasis on choice and the psychology of
choice as the centerpiece of economic analysis. Use of the term “rational choice”
was also especially significant in the 1950s and 1960s for its normative
implications in a world where capitalist democracy had to be defended against
Soviet collectivism: it showed that, like planning, efficient markets too could be
grounded in rationality (Amadae, 2003). This focus on rationality also served to
demarcate economics from sociology (see Samuelson 1947, p. 90, echoing the
view of the Harvard sociologist Talcott Parsons).
Retrospectives: On the Definition of Economics 229

By the 1970s, maximizing behavior and rationality were sometimes being

explicitly combined. As Gary Becker (1976, p. 5) famously described it, “The
combined assumptions of maximizing behavior, market equilibrium, and stable
preferences, used relentlessly and unflinchingly, form the heart of the economic
approach as I see it.” This definition of economics, of course, is a far more
narrowly and specifically drawn definition than one seen in Robbins, while at the
same time being completely consistent with Robbins. It makes economics an
approach rather than a subject matter, and it is extremely specific about the
nature of the individual choice process and the type of social interaction that
economic analysis involves. It also facilitated an expansion of the scope of
economic analysis.

The Expanding Boundaries of Economics

When Robbins (1932, p. 15) defined economics as “the science which

studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which
have alternative uses,” he noted immediately the rather radical implications for
the scope of the science, insisting that as long as there are opportunity costs
imposed by scarcity, there are “no limitations on the subject-matter of Economic
Science” (p. 16). But Robbins did not pursue the implications of this statement.
This led Gary Becker, in some unpublished remarks at the session marking the
75th anniversary of the publication of Robbins’s Essay at the ASSA (Allied Social
Science Associa tions) meetings in Chicago, during January 2007, to suggest
that Robbins perhaps did not really believe his own definition. Of course, by this
measure, neither did anyone else, in that prior to the 1960s almost no
economists would have applied economic techniques across the full spectrum of
human life and decision making.
The expansion of the boundaries of economics was bound up in the shift
from scarcity to choice—when economists began to think of economics as the
analysis of individual or collective decision making. Some of the early moves
toward expand ing the boundaries of economics—for example, Becker’s (1957)
work on discrim ination and Jacob Mincer’s (1958, 1962) work on human capital
acquisition—were not far from economists’ traditional concerns. However, this
literature took a different approach from previous work by treating phenomena as
components or as outcomes of an individual choice process. Similarly, the
distinctive feature of the work on political processes by James Buchanan and
Gordon Tullock (1962), Anthony Downs (1957), William Riker (1962), and others
was the use of a choice theoretic framework. It was not until well into the 1960s
that economists moved decidedly outside the subject’s traditional boundaries,
with work such as Becker’s (1968) analysis of crime and punishment. Against a
legal tradition that saw crimi nals as unreasonable violators of society’s
reasonable norms and conventions, Becker assumed that criminals were making
rational career choices based on consistent and stable preferences, in light of
their opportunity sets or constraints. While the boundaries were expanding,
however, the approach to “doing econom
230 Journal of Economic Perspectives

ics,” ironically, was narrowing. The move to economics as the analysis of choice
had the effect of pushing to the side questions of philosophy and ethics, history
and institutions, broader conceptions of rationality, and various nonmathematical
ap proaches to the subject.
Given Gary Becker’s role in pushing outward the boundaries of economics,
one might expect that he would have had strong views about a broad definition of
the subject. However, in his 1971 graduate textbook, Becker (p. 1) defined eco
nomics with a straightforward extension of the Robbins definition to a choice
theoretic framework: “the study of the allocation of scarce means to satisfy com
peting ends.” In 1976, though, Becker (1976, p. 4) felt compelled to point out that
most economists find the generality of this definition embarrassing and qualify it
“to exclude most nonmarket behavior.” What distinguished Becker and others
tilling these soils (many of them Becker’s students) is that they did not exclude
nonmarket behavior from their own work.
While some variant of the Robbins definition might seem to go hand-in-glove
with broadening the field of economics, not everyone associated with the
expansion of the boundaries of economics has been favorably disposed toward
the Robbins definition. For example, both James Buchanan and Ronald Coase
have expressed opposition to a general extension of economics to all areas in
which choices are made. Buchanan (1964)—who was a student of and greatly
influenced by Frank Knight—preferred to define economics as “the study of the
whole system of exchange relationships” (p. 220), even suggesting that the
Robbins definition “served to retard... scientific progress” (p. 214). Coase (1977,
p. 487) suggested that economics involves the study of “the social institutions
that bind together the economic system,” in which he in cluded firms, input and
output markets, and the banking system, and he predicted a dim future for the
application of rational choice theory across the social sciences (Medema, 1994).
For both Buchanan and Coase, then, econom ics is defined by its subject matter
rather than its approach.
Much of this expansion of the scope of economics has been based on a
unifying concept that individuals choose rationally in all aspects of their lives: not
just in making occupational and consumption choices (legal or illegal), but also in
the voting booth, in marriage, and in the rearing of children. Recent work in
behavioral economics and experimental economics pushes the boundaries of
economics in a different direction: instead of basing explanations on a hypothesis
of rational choice, it has often questioned whether choices are rational or consis
tent. For example, a broad range of work shows that people’s choices over an
objective set of outcomes will vary depending on how those choices are framed.
This work often verges into what has been traditionally viewed as psychology
(how people actually make choices) or sociology (how choices are influenced by
social settings). This kind of work has not yet resulted in the sort of reformulation
 of the foundations of economic analysis that could lead to displacing the Robbins
defini tion of economics, but it may have the potential to do so.
Roger E. Backhouse and Steven G. Medema 231

Conclusion

Modern economists do not subscribe to a homogeneous definition of their

subject. At a time when economists are tackling subjects as diverse as growth,
auctions, crime, and religion with a methodological toolkit that includes real
analysis, econometrics, laboratory experiments, and historical case studies, and
when they are debating the explanatory roles of rationality and behavioral norms,
any concise definition of economics is likely to be inadequate.
This lack of agreement on a definition does not necessarily pose a problem
for the subject. Economists are generally guided by pragmatic considerations of
what works or by methodological views emanating from various sources, not by
formal definitions: to repeat the comment attributed to Jacob Viner, economics is
what economists do. However, the way the definition of economics has evolved is
more than a historical curiosity. At times, definitions are used to justify what
economists are doing. Becker’s definition clearly reflects his approach to
economic analysis, and the principles texts from which we quoted in our
introduction reflect their authors’ perspectives on current work in the subject—
even if the actual contents of these texts varies little across authors (Colander,
2006b).
However, definitions can also reflect the direction in which their authors want
to see the subject move and can even influence practice. Robbins (1935, p. xv,
italics added) claimed that his essay was based on “the actual practice of the
best modern works” on economics. This is a statement with which the
Marshallians and the Institutionalists, the dominant forces in the profession at the
time, would not have agreed. In other words, Robbins’s definition reflected the
way he believed economics should be done. James Buchanan (1964, p. 214), for
one, believed that the Robbins definition did influence the practice of economics
rather than simply summing it up: “Only since The Nature and Significance of
Economic Science,” he said, “have economists so exclusively devoted their
energies to the problems raised by scarcity, broadly considered, and to the
necessity for the making of allocative decisions.” Whether or not economists are
conscious of it happening, adhering to a specific definition may constrain the
problems that economists believe it is legitimate to tackle and the methods by
which they choose to tackle them.
232 Journal of Economic Perspectives Functions and Orderings.” Economica, n.s. 26(102):
121–27.
Backhouse, Roger E., and Steven G. Medema.
Forthcoming. “Defining Economics: Robbins’s Essay
in Theory and Practice.” Economica.
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