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Weekly Sage #11: Jacob Viner – Chicago School

18 Jan 2019

The Weekly Sage hopes to regularly bring brief profiles of key contributors to thought and faith before a Christian audience for historical education and awareness of valuable resources.

 

Sometimes history brings together a special combination of resources and people that form a center of intellectual influence. The Weekly Sage will occasionally consider such “Schools” together. As such this is the first of a five-week series on Chicago-School Economists. This will be understood simply to mean uniquely impactful members of the faculty of economics at the University of Chicago in the 20th century.

 

Jacob Viner

 

 

 

Jacob Viner (1892-1970) was an economist, economic advisor, and multi-disciplinary scholar with a significant influence in American academia during the 20th century. His scholastic excellence was a feature of his career from the very beginning, as he studied under Frank Taussig, a leading economic theorist in the field of international trade, at Harvard University, receiving his PhD in Economics in 1922. During World War I, as a graduate student, he worked at the U.S. Tariff Commission and the U.S. Shipping Board, using and sharpening his own growing expertise on the global economy and trade issues. Then, he joined the faculty of the University of Chicago, a posting he maintained for roughly 30 years, while again working for the United States Government in the Department of the Treasury during the Great Depression and World War II.[3]

Such experiences, combined with his top-level studies, led Viner to significant theoretical contributions in economic theory, mainly demonstrated in his 1937 work, Studies in the Theory of International Trade. Viner also worked with leading Chicago economist Frank H. Knight to edit the Journal of Political Economy from 1928-1946, a period described as “the peak of its distinction.”[4] Such a platform enabled Viner to develop numerous significant articles and a broad impact on the economic field in general.

Viner’s written scholarship exemplifies an incredible objectivity. As one example of this style, Viner concludes a largely critical chapter on the gold standard by stating, “The gold standard is a wretched standard, but it may conceivably be the best available to us.”[5] Viner’s articles and books provide an immersive experience in the moderate, balanced analytical approach. He consistently weighs both sides to an issue, conceding the strengths and noting the weaknesses in all relevant arguments, even his own.

This approach made Viner an ideal academic to approach the key issues of economic history. While he framed his approach to the history of ideas, particularly pertaining to the market, as a matter of intellectual curiosity, Viner produced numerous essays in this field, as well as full-length works, such as The Role of Providence in the Social Order. This work also serves to separate Viner from many other economists who focus solely on developing technical frameworks and statistical series. Viner, by contrast, was willing to dig significantly into the impact of faith, religious leaders, and ecclesiastical structures. Quoting from Augustine, Chrysostom, and Ambrose alongside Adam Smith, Bernard Mandeville, and John Maynard Keynes is not something that readers expect, or that many authors can achieve.

Thus, Viner’s career composes top-level work in three areas – academia, literature, and civil service. In each, he left a significant legacy, whether in students (such as Milton Friedman) mentored, ideas traced, or policies advocated. He advanced technical economics significantly, particularly in the area of cost and supply curves. Further, he maintained an awareness of the doctrines of classical economics through intellectual history at a time when progress in the field led many top scholars to mischaracterize the older views. His willingness to engage with and criticize American policy combined with a serious commitment to factual rigor that brought a uniquely objective tone. While he did not embrace the mathematical or Keynesian revolutions in the economic discipline, Viner helped to shape the next generation of scholars through his influential role in the Chicago School. While flashier economists may have been more prominent in their own time, Viner’s lasting impact is a lesson to all of us regarding the merits of balance, patience, and excellence in effort.

 

 

 

[1] Jacob Viner, The Role of Providence in the Social Order, (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1972), 112-113.

[2] Jacob Viner, The Long View and the Short: Studies in Economic Theory and Policy, (Illinois: The Free Press, 1958), 112.

[3] Jacob Viner, Essays on the Intellectual History of Economics, ed. by Douglas A. Irwin, (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1991), 5.

[4] Ibid, 5.

[5] Jacob Viner, International Economics, (Illinois: The Free Press, 1951), 139.

[6] Jacob Viner, The Long View and the Short: Studies in Economic Theory and Policy, (Illinois: The Free Press, 1958), 94.

[7] Jacob Viner, International Economics, (Illinois: The Free Press, 1951), 341.