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Ayres' Theory of Economic Progress: An Evaluation of Its Place in Economic Literature
Author(s) -
Hamilton David
Publication year - 1981
Publication title -
american journal of economics and sociology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.199
H-Index - 38
eISSN - 1536-7150
pISSN - 0002-9246
DOI - 10.1111/j.1536-7150.1981.tb01660.x
Subject(s) - veblen good , humanism , neoclassical economics , institutional economics , sociology , positive economics , economic thought , epistemology , social science , economics , philosophy , political science , law
A bstract .Clarence E. Ayres was unfortunate in certain of his critics; they missed the point. With the publication of a new edition of his classic. The Theory of Economic Progress , the time is ripe to re‐evaluate Ayres' contributions. Ayres, like Thorstein Veblen before him, assimilated into economics the findings of other social science and humanistic disciplines, particularly anthropology. Both portrayed clearly the role in the economy of what Veblen called the matter‐of‐fact and Ayres ‘technology,’ The understanding of the role of technology and its extension in economic progress , implicit in Veblen, is made explicit by Ayres. Similarly the insight that certain entrepreneurial and financial activities which are ceremonial are non‐essential to the technological process and hence dispensable is a contribution by Ayres to the one by Veblen that enables us to distinguish the scientific elements in economic theory from the theological.