The 2002 Veblen-Commons Award Recipient: Edythe S. Miller

Abstract

It is always a great pleasure to recognize the recipient of the Veblen-Commons Award since this is the highest honor that our association can bestow. This year's award is particularly significant because its recipient, Edythe S. Miller, is an excellent representative of those dedicated institutional economists who combine an understanding of the discipline with dedicated public service to promote the general welfare and in so doing expand the content and nature of institutional economics. If one focuses on that subset of institutionalists who have dealt with the public regulation of business in energy, telecommunications, and transportation, it is possible to argue that those who have been most successful have been able to satisfy three conditions. These are (1) a scholarly appreciation of the underpinnings and rationale of institutional economics, (2) a major commitment to public service, and (3) an ability to employ institutionalist tools to forecast the long-term consequences of specific public and private policies. Success in meeting these conditions will provide new insights into the driving forces shaping the economy far beyond any understanding provided by traditional mainstream economics. It is an easy task to demonstrate that Edie Miller has met these criteria in an exemplary fashion. She has a distinguished publication record, with over forty-five papers and comments covering the landscape of institutional economics. As a tribute to her breadth of interest, she not only covers many of the issues associated with public utility regulation but also such diverse topics as the economics of poverty; the philosophy, methodology, and theory of institutional economics; the instrumental efficiency of social value theory; and Veblen and Commons and the concept of community. About one-half of her publications have dealt with different dimensions of economic regulation. In particular, she is concerned with the consequences of market concentration and the opportunities that this concentration affords for the exercise of economic and political power. It follows, therefore, that much of her writing is highly critical of the neoclassical economists' simplistic adaptation of the competitive model to the unique characteristics of the public utility and transportation industries. She is equally critical of those who accept a naive form of Schumpetarian dynamics in which technology is assumed to sweep away all barriers to competition. With respect to the latter, Edie