In Search of the Two-Handed Economist

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xx

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2. Elephant Stalkers: Fixed Perspectives and Required Results

   • Craig Freedman

   Pages 1-24

3. A Tale of Two Cities: A Priori Assumptions and A Priori Conclusions

   • Craig Freedman

   Pages 25-74

4. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter: Chicago’s Climb to Glory

   • Craig Freedman

   Pages 75-121

5. Love among the Ruins: Understanding The Romantic Economist by Richard Bronk (2009)

   • Craig Freedman

   Pages 123-164

6. The Chicago School of Anti-Monopolistic Competition: Stigler’s Scorched Earth Campaign Against Chamberlin

   • Craig Freedman

   Pages 165-342

7. De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum: George Stigler through Gary Becker’s Eyes

   • Craig Freedman

   Pages 343-373

8. Marching to a Different Drummer: Sam Peltzman Reflects on George Stigler

   • Craig Freedman

   Pages 375-407

9. Back Matter

   Pages 409-418

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For the economics profession, issues of marketing and ideology have often been reduced to the status of 'the love that dare not speak its name'. This volume brings these issues out of the closet and examines what effect, if any, these factors have in shaping the contours of the discipline. The way in which economists face policy issues is in part driven, even if only subconsciously, by unacknowledged ideological concerns and the increasing need to sell one's theories, views and policies in a frustratingly competitive academic market. In seven carefully and provocatively granulated chapters, the volume raises possible implications of these marketing and ideological imperatives by approaching the problem from a number of surprising and irreverent directions. Though unfortunately, in its irrevocable denouement the text proves incapable of creating anything resembling a life changing experience let alone coming to any definite and irrefutable conclusions. Like life itself, economics is full of uncertainties and uncontrollable difficulties.

• Ideology
• Methodology
• Chicago school of economics
• Neoclassical economics
• Marketing
• George Stigler
• Milton Friedman

• University New South Wales, A, Australia

  Craig Freedman

Craig Freedman is an associate professor at the University of New South Wales, Australia, and has taught at a number of other major universities. His main research areas are the history of economic thought, the Japanese economy, and industrial organisation. He is the author of numerous books including, Chicago Fundamentalism (2008) and The Last Time I Saw Richard (2011).

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