Thorstein Veblen

The Higher Learning in America (Dodo Press) Thorstein Veblen

Thorstein Bunde Veblen (1857-1929) was a Norwegian- American sociologist and economist and a founder of the Institutional economics movement. He was an impassioned critic of the performance of the American economy, and is most famous for his book The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899). He obtained his B. A. in Economics at Carleton College in 1880. In 1892, he became a professor at the newly opened University of Chicago, simultaneously serving as managing editor of the Journal of Political Economy. Veblen developed a 20th century evolutionary economics based upon the new ideas emerging from anthropology, sociology, and psychology. He described economic behaviour as socially rather than individually determined and saw economic organisation as a process of ongoing evolution. He wanted economists to grasp the effects of social and cultural change on economic changes. Amongst his other works are The Theory of Business Enterprise (1904), The Instinct of Workmanship (1914) and The Higher Learning in America (1918).