The Chicago School of antitrust claims that it made a major contribution beginning in the late 1970s to making antitrust policy coherent and “scientific” by introducing basic economic concepts. It both advanced the Consumer Welfare Standard (a normative economic theory to segregate...

Classical law and economics is foundational to the American legal system. Centered at the University of Chicago, with a reach touching nearly every law faculty and economics department in the country, its assumptions, most especially that humans act both rationally and selfishly, informs the...

There has long been a presumption that the price-level-stabilization frameworks of Irving Fisher and Chicagoans Henry Simons and Lloyd Mints were essentially equivalent. I show that there were subtle, but important, differences in the rationales underlying the policies of Fisher and the...

Everybody knows that Chicago scholars dismissed predatory pricing as a practice of concern for antitrust law due to its alleged unprofitability, both relative and absolute. Many know that the dismissal dates back to the early years of the Chicago revolution in antitrust and has been reiterated...

Neoliberal economics has reshaped societies. How did this doctrine ascend? While existing explanations emphasize a variety of factors, one neglected aspect is intellectual rivalry within the US economics profession. Neoliberalism had to attain prestige against the grain of the intelligentsia...

Though the Chicago school has been the subject of no small amount of research over the past several decades, that scholarship has focused largely on persons, ideas, and influence - in short, on the school itself. No attention has been paid to the origins of that label and the avenues via which...

Mark Ramseyer has been a leading force in bringing to bear the methods of Law and Economics to an increasingly ambitious analysis of the Japanese legal and economic systems. He has deliberately assumed an iconoclastic position in debunking a number of widely-held beliefs about Japan. More...

Though the Chicago school has been the subject of no small amount of research over the past several decades, that scholarship has focused largely on persons, ideas, and influence - in short, on the school itself. No attention has been paid to the origins of that label and the avenues via which...

This paper is about the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago, between 1947 and 1982. The paper has the form of a conversation between the two authors and covers issues such as the existence of a "Chicago School," the Department's governance, the personalities of some well-known...

This paper is about the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago, between 1947 and 1982. The paper has the form of a conversation between the two authors and covers issues such as the existence of a "Chicago School," the Department's governance, the personalities of some well-known...

This paper depicts the co-evolution of the political economies of the "Old Chicago" and Freiburg Schools. These communities within the "laissez-faire within rules" research program and the long-standing "thinking-inorders" tradition emerged in the 1930s and culminated in the 1940s into a...

"An essential origin story of modern society's most influential economic doctrine. The Chicago School of economic thought has been widely generalized-and caricaturized-in contemporary debate. What is often portrayed as a monolithic obsession with markets is, in fact, a nuanced set of economic...

In this book, Sebastian Edwards tells the remarkable story of how the neoliberal economic model – installed in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship and deepened during three decades of left-of-center governments – came to an end in 2021, when Gabriel Boric, a young former student activist,...

In this paper I analyze the work on exchange rates and external imbalances by University of Chicago faculty members during the university's first hundred years, 1892-1992. Many people associate Chicago's views with Milton Friedman's advocacy for flexible exchange rates. But, of course, there was...

Milton Friedman was, alongside John Maynard Keynes, the most influential economist of the twentieth century. His work was instrumental in the turn toward free markets that defined the 1980s, and his full-throated defenses of capitalism and freedom resonated with audiences around the world....

Beginning in the 1950s, a group of scholars primarily associated with the University of Chicago began to challenge many of the fundamental tenants of antitrust law. This movement, which became known as the Chicago School of Antitrust Analysis, profoundly altered the course of American antitrust...

The Chicago School of antitrust has benefitted from a great deal of law office history, written by admiring advocates rather than more dispassionate observers. This essay attempts a more neutral stance, looking at the ideology, political impulses, and economics that produced the Chicago School...

Paper presented at "The Legacy of Chicago Economics" conference at the Becker-Friedman Institute for Economic Research, The University of Chicago, October 5, 2015. A survey of Frank Knight's contribution to the Chicago School, and a consideration of how the School moved away from Knight's...

The libertarian defense of free enterprise, free trade, and freedom from government regulations and controls is grounded in a normative commitment to individual freedom. The majority of the economics profession, including the Chicago School, are committed in the first instance to methodological...

In terms of economic methodology, Friedman's most well-known contribution is his 1953 essay, “The Methodology of Positive Economics.” This important contribution has overshadowed his earlier contribution to economic methodology, entitled “Lerner on the Economics of Control” (1947)....

This paper takes up Coase's views on the Chicago school, as found in his published and, especially, unpublished writings, beginning already in the early 1960s, prior to his appointment at Chicago. These commentaries at once demonstrate a measure of kinship and significant differences of...

Since the publication of Robert Bork's The Antitrust Paradox, lawyers, judges, and many economists have defended “Consumer welfare” (CW) as a standard for decisions about antitrust goals and enforcement priorities. This paper argues that the CW is actually an empty concept and is an...

This paper presents an historical analysis of the antitrust laws. Its central contention is that the history of antitrust can only be understood in light of U.S. economic history and the succession of dominant economic policy regimes that punctuated that history. The antitrust laws and a subset...

This paper presents an historical analysis of the antitrust laws. Its central contention is that the history of antitrust can only be understood in light of U.S. economic history and the succession of dominant economic policy regimes that punctuated that history. The antitrust laws and a subset...

Part I: Themes in Chicago Economics -- 1: The Department of Economics at the University of Chicago, 1947–1982 -- 2: Economic History in Departments of Economics: The Case of the University of Chicago, 1892 to the Present -- 3: International Economics at Chicago -- 4: Chicago Political Economy,...

The New Brandeis School renews debate on two fundamental antitrust policy questions: 1) what source of wisdom or set of values should inform antitrust rules; and 2) what criterion should govern antitrust case adjudication. In our view, the Chicago School's answer to the first question was right;...

The articles collected in the three-volume set of Chicago Price Theory illustrate elements of continuity and change in the development of the Chicago School. Its editors stress a continuity in price theory at Chicago that runs from Frank Knight to Gary Becker. Our main contribution in this...

This paper examines James Buchanan's earliest writings within the context of post-WWII public finance theory and his education at Chicago. Public choice scholars have long recognized their ties to Chicago, but few have examined Chicago's role serving as the primordial soup for Buchanan's later...

"From the author of Keynes Hayek, the next great duel in the history of economics. In 1966 two columnists joined Newsweek magazine. Their assignment: debate the world of business and economics. Paul Samuelson was a towering figure in Keynesian economics, which supported the management of the...

Two stories currently circulate regarding Frank Knight's relationship to the Chicago School of Economics. The first is a story of tradition, emphasizing the continuity of Chicago economics; the other emphasizes the new beginnings in the post-war period. The second story even implies that the...

For most economists the terms “Chicago economics” and “institutionalism” denote clearly antithetical approaches to the discipline. Various members of the modern “Chicago School” have made highly dismissive remarks concerning American institutionalism. Coase has commented that...

The central claim of this Article is that, as a descriptive matter, trademark legislation and court interpretation is a close normative match with the Chicago School approach of scholars such as Robert Bork and Richard Posner. The organizing intellectual structure of modern trademark law, as...