The Teaching of Business Cycles in 1905–6: Insight into the Development of Macroeconomic Theory

Abstract

Traditional business cycle theories and the business cycles course were important facets of the development of what is now seen as macroeconomics, and knowledge of their development affords insight into the development of macroeconomic theory. Fortunately there is now available a set of excellent lecture notes and student reports from a course, ‘Commercial Crises and Cycles of Trade’, given at Harvard two-thirds of a century ago. The notes cast light on the early identity and character of the study of what is now within the domain of macroeconomic (and monetary) theory, as well as the quality of teaching in that field, during a period when macroeconomic questions hitherto have appeared to have been largely dormant. They reflect a surprisingly ‘modern’ business cycles course in both coverage and execution, as well as basic conceptualization, and also evidence the considerable intellectual ferment — largely forgotten and thus neglected by both macro theorists and historians of economic thought — that accompanied the acknowledged doctrine of Say’s law.