The first economic institutionalism as a dissident intellectual movement

Abstract

Economic institutionalism is a current of thought whose birth can be placed towards the end of the 19th century, from the publication of the book The Theory of the Leisure Class, by Thorstein Veblen and A Sociological View of Sovereignty, by John R. Commons, both of 1899. It is demonstrate that institutionalism was, in its origin, an essentially American intellectual movement with considerable influence in academic and political spheres in the period between the end of First World War and the crisis of the third decade of the twentieth century. It seeks to highlight the dissident aspect of institutionalism against the dominance of the classical system. This work allows to establish the origins and identity of an economic movement of importance for the present of economic science, since for some years ago there has been an institutionalist revival.