The genesis of urban economics was a response to the growing problems of our cities. Developments within the University have also had strong impact on the size and role of the department. Undergraduate enrollments were swollen by the increased size of the student body and the continuing popularity of economics as a field of study. The expansion of the graduate school was accompanied by a commensurate increase in the number of graduate students in economics and expansion of the graduate curriculum. The creation of the graduate program in the Woodrow Wilson School in 1947 and its marked expansion after 1961 have engaged the efforts of many economists.
Many more economists are teachers in the program.
By the end of World War II most of the faculty who had carried the work of the department in the prewar period had retired and had not been replaced. The department had not only to provide for these replacements but also to make large net additions to its staff to meet its mounting responsibilities. To do this and also improve quality proved to be no easy task in an academic market in which able economists were scarce and in great demand. But somehow it was done. By the early 1970s the department had more than 40 members and was generally conceded to be well within the top seven or eight economics departments in the country.