Shattering Hope and Building Empire: Economics the Imperial Science at Chicago, George Stigler and Aaron Director

Abstract

The forays of the Chicago School of Economics into law, political science, and sociology have attracted no shortage of attention. The secondary literature on these forays focuses on the published work of members of the Chicago School, and is purblind to the examination of archival materials. This chapter uses archival research about two pillars of the Chicago School, George Stigler and Aaron Director, and offers a novel account of the history of economics imperialism. What becomes evident is that the diverse activities collectively labeled “economics imperialism” (educating judges in Chicago law and economics to better use economic analysis in a decision, undermining the ideal of the state governed by democratic consensus purportedly held by the professoriate, and inventing a certain kind of cost–benefit analysis for evaluating regulatory bodies) were devised for the same political goal: the ascendancy of Chicago neoliberalism.