Affiliation:
1. University of Manchester
Abstract
Economics has long history of “rehabilitations,” including W.H. Hutt’s rehabilitation of Say’s law, and Alfred Marshall’s attempt to rehabilitate David Ricardo. The rehabilitation of Frank A. Fetter should be as important as either of these, especially for economists working in the contemporary Austrian tradition. The historical records reveal that for the last century there has been underway a nearly unbroken series of efforts, especially by Austrian economists, to rehabilitate Fetter’s contributions and use them to revitalize economic theory. This paper relates this history, which chronicles the rise, decline, and rise again of one of the great American economic theorists. Yet crucially, this is not a story about Fetter alone, but also of the fortunes of the Austrian school and its rise, decline, and renaissance.
Subject
General Economics, Econometrics and Finance
Reference69 articles.
1. Frank A. Fetter mss, 1875–1988 (FAF). Lilly Library, Indiana University Bloomington.
2. Murray N. Rothbard mss, 1926–1995 (MNR). Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn, Ala.
3. Other Sources
4. Ashley, William J. 1891. “The Rehabilitation of Ricardo.” Economic Journal 1, no. 3: 474–89.
5. Blaug, Mark. 1972. “Was There a Marginal Revolution?” History of Political Economy 4, no. 2: 269–80.