Why was the Virginia School Stillborn?

David Levy and Sandra Peart’s history of the Virginia School is a welcome addition to the history of recent economic thought literature. Using the unique blend of textual and archival methods that characterizes their work, they provide a consideration of why the Virginia School was stillborn and never became the competitor to (American style) liberal mainstream economics, while the Chicago school did.

Although their in-depth story is slightly different from the story I outlined in my book, Where Economics Went Wrong (Colander & Freedman, 2019), in large part we are in agreement. The Virginia School was much more a continuation of Frank Knight’s classical liberal approach than was the approach that became associated with Chicago economics in its Friedman/Stigler/Becker reincarnation. The Virginia School remained true to the classical liberal methodology, and saw policy analysis requiring far more than scientific analysis. The Chicago school accepted the mainstream scientific approach to policy, giving up its classical liberal methodological legacy.