We next turn to textbooks, on the grounds that this is where economists typically encounter definitions of their subject. We start by analysing the academic journals, considering first the initial reception of the definition and then discussions from the late 1930s to the 1950s, the period when economists began to see themselves as modellers. Our approach is to focus on explicit discussions of the Robbins definition. We argue that it was not until the 1960s that the definition came to be accepted, and even then endorsement of it was far from universal. 2 It should, therefore, not be surprising to find that the notion that economists instantly recognized the Robbins definition as an appropriate summary of their discipline is a myth.
In 1932, it may have seemed counter-intuitive (to put it mildly) to argue that economics involved working out the implications of scarcity, at least at the societal level, where the pressing economic problem was a glut of capital and labour. This is perhaps not surprising given the irony of the definition having been proposed when the world was at the deepest point of the worst depression ever encountered in the capitalist world. Though Robbins' definition is often presented as self-evidently correct, as a depiction of the economic problem faced by either individuals or societies, both the definition and the developments that it has been used to support were keenly contested. However, the question of how Robbins' definition was received has been completely neglected. 1 Given the importance of these issues, it is not surprising that scholars have paid attention to the origin of the definition (see Howson 2004) and to the methodological conclusions that Robbins drew from it. This laid a foundation that could be seen as justifying not only the narrowing of economic theory to the theory of constrained maximization or rational choice but also the ‘imperialism’ of economists' ventures into the other social sciences. … There are no limitations on the subject-matter of Economic Science save this’ ( Robbins 1932, p. This had the implication that, insofar as it deals with the influence of scarcity, ‘any kind of human behaviour falls within the scope of Economic Generalisations. The reason the Robbins definition had such radical implications was that, in contrast to previous ‘classificatory’ definitions, such as that economics is the study of the production and use of wealth, or the study of what contributes to economic welfare, his definition was ‘analytical’: it identified an aspect of behaviour ( Robbins 1932, p. It both influenced what economists believed they could and could not say in their role as economists and figured prominently in discussions of the role of theory in economics. Though Robbins minimized the novelty of his definition, stressing its roots in continental traditions, it had radical implications. The sentence in which Robbins defined economics as dealing with the relationship between ends and scarce means is central to the arguments he made in An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science (1932).
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