The Chicago School: How the University of Chicago Assembled the Thinkers Who Revolutionized Economics and Business

(Paperback, First Trade Paper Edition)

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Alandmark: the first book to provide an in-depth history of the Chicago School of Economics, which sprang from the economics departments at the University of Chicago and its business school in the mid-twentieth century and went on to revolutionize how we think about economics and business.
When Richard Nixon said "We are all Keynesians now" in 1971, few could have predicted that the next three decades would have resulted in a complete transformation of the global economic landscape. This transformation was led chiefly by a small but potently influential circle of thinkers teaching or trained in Chicago's departments of economics and political science and its business schoolmany of whom had worked in relative obscurity for decades.
These thinkersincluding Milton Friedman, Gary Becker, George Stigler, Robert Lucas, and othersrevolutionized economic orthodoxy in the second half of the twentieth century, utterly dominated the Nobel Prizes awarded in economics, and changed how business is done around the world.
Written by a leading European economic thinker with his own long ties to the University of Chicago, The Chicago School is the first in-depth look at how this remarkable group of thinkers came together, and how their influence and importance grew around the world.

Reviews

"This is an admirably detailed and thoroughly welcome history of a great centre of economic thought." -- The Economist "Overtveldt is at his best in his depiction of the ruthless yet stimulating internal culture of the department during these years. Workshops that might be polite but sleepy seminars at other campuses became 'bloodbaths' at Chicago. Graduate classes were exercises in 'terror.'" -- Kim Phillips-Fein, Chicago Tribune "Unique and fascinating." -- Publishers Weekly "I enjoyed the book very much. Instead of stopping at Friedman, Coase and Director, it also offers a comprehensive treatment of [many] neglected figures... it is a landmark in the history of economic thought." -- Tyler Cowen, "The Marginal Revolution"

Author Bio

Johan Van Overtveldt is the director of Belgium-based think-tank VKW Metena, which works on a breadth of economics-related issues. Former editor-in-chief of the Belgian newspaper Trends, he has written several books in Dutch on economics-related issues and contributes freely to the Wall Street Journal Europe.