The Age of Economic Measurement

by Klein, Judy L.; Morgan, Mary S.

• ISBN13: 9780822365174
• ISBN10: 0822365170
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-05-01
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr

Summary

The twentieth-century could be justifiably called the age of measurement, yet few scholars have looked at the development of measurement and its impact on economics. What accounted for the emergence and establishment of economic measurement as a critical component of modern economics? What questions and problems created the drive to measurement, and how have economists reacted to the changing status of numbers in their field? The eleven essays presented here include the work of William Stanley Jevons, Irving Fisher, Lucien March, Wassily Leontief, Richard Stone, and A. F. W. Crome, as well as discussions of events connected with the Federal Reserve Bank and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In addition, four "perspectives" placed throughout the volume consider the paths just covered and the vistas that lay ahead.The Age of Economic Measurementis the 2001 supplement to the journalHistory of Political Economy. All 2001 subscribers will receive a copy as part of their annual subscription.

Table of Contents

Preface	1	(2)
The Reader's Essential Non-Guide to The Age of Economic Measurement	3	(1)
Judy L. Klein
Mary S. Morgan
Perspective
Economics and the History of Measurement	4	(19)
Theodore M. Porter
A. F. W. Crome's Measurements of the ``Strength of the State'': Statistical Representations in Central Europe around 1800	23	(34)
Sybilla Nikolow
Make a Righteous Number: Social Surveys, the Men and Religion Forward Movement, and Quantification in American Economics	57	(29)
Bradley W. Bateman
March to Numbers: The Statistical Style of Lucien March	86	(25)
Franck Jovanovic
Philippe Le Gall
Perspective
Reflections from the Age of Economic Measurement	111	(26)
Judy L. Klein
Measuring Causes: Episodes in the Quantitative Assessment of the Value of Money	137	(25)
Kevin D. Hoover
Michael E. Dowell
Quantity Theory and Needs-of-Trade Measurements and Indicators for Monetary Policymakers in the 1920s	162	(28)
Thomas M. Humphrey
Leontief and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1941-54: Developing a Framework for Measurement	190	(23)
Martin C. Kohli
Richard Stone and Measurement Criteria for National Accounts	213	(22)
Flavio Comim
Perspective
Making Measuring Instruments	235	(17)
Mary S. Morgan
``Facts Carefully Marshalled'' in the Empirical Studies of William Stanley Jevons	252	(25)
Sandra J. Peart
An Instrument Can Make a Science: Jevons's Balancing Acts in Economics	277	(26)
Harro Maas
Perspective
Measurement, and Changing Images of Mathematical Knowledge	303	(10)
E. Roy Weintraub
Fisher's Instrumental Approach to Index Numbers	313	(32)
Marcel Boumans
Quantifying the Qualitative: Quality-Adjusted Price Indexes in the United States, 1915--61	345	(26)
H. Spencer Banzhaf
Contributors	371	(4)
Index	375