This article examines the institutionalization of public finance as a subfield of economics in American universities from the founding of professional academic economics departments in the 1880s through the eve of the Great Depression. It is argued that what became identified as the accepted...

Academic seminars are a rather recent invention. Among the seminars that flourished at Harvard during the late 1920s and early 1930s, one played a major role in creating what Margaret Gilbert (1989, 2000) calls a “joint commitment” of its members. Organized by Lawrence J. Henderson, it was...