A Brief History of the American Economic Association

I Creating a Professional Community THE AMERICAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION (AEA) was inaugurated by a miscellaneous group of scholars, university administrators, and public figures in September 1885, in the early stages of a sustained expansion in American academic life. Its original objectives of encouraging research, publications on economic subjects, and perfect freedom in economic discussions have been consistently maintained, sometimes not without difficulty, given the disagreements among its members and the persistent tension between the desire for scientific objectivity and nonpartisanship and the urge to make an impact on public policy. This problem was especially acute during the AEA's early years, when economic questions were at the forefront of public discussion. A number of prominent American economists were then under attack, and some were dismissed from or forced out of their university posts because of their opinions. However, under its first president, F. A. Walker, an internationally known figure who served for the first seven years, the AEA gradually lost some of its initial reformist tone and concentrated increasingly on more strictly scholarly issues. Unlike the British Royal Economic Society, which has frequently had a nonprofessional president, the AEA has invariably been dominated by academic economists, although in recent decades prominent government professional economists have occasionally held the office--for example, Alice Rivlin, the first female president, in 1985. While the AEA's contributions to economic knowledge through its periodicals--the American Economic Review (from 1911), the Journal of Economic Literature (from 1963), and the Journal of Economic Perspectives (from 1987)--and in various other ways are undeniable, its services to the profession have perhaps been unnecessarily restricted because of the heterogeneity of its constituency, which has always included a substantial proportion of nonacademic members, and its commitment to nonpartisanship. Thus, for example, the AEA's reactions to the conflicts and tensions in American society have been distinctly more cautious than those of some other learned societies, both within and outside the social sciences, with respect to academic freedom issues. However, the AEA played a notable and constructive part in both world wars by organizing professional expertise for government service, and by conducting open debates and issuing publications on the economic problems of war and peace. The Association has also since 1945 occupied a leading role in the internationalization of the economic profession. It has always been an "open" society, with no significant membership restrictions, partly because of the objections to control by a limited elite or coterie. Consequently, it has only occasionally had any direct influence on doctrinal developments in the field. Nevertheless, there have been periodic protests about the organization's un-representativeness and oligarchic management, a state of affairs reflecting the size, diversity, and geographical dispersion of its membership, which now stands at a bit over 22,000 (including subscribers). Under its charter of incorporation, the AEA committed itself to "the encouragement of economic research, especially the historical study of the actual conditions of industrial life," as well as to "the encouragement of perfect freedom of economic discussion." In particular, "the Association as such [took] no partisan attitude, nor commit[ed] its members to any position on practical economic questions." While the formal organization was thus made distinct from the individual activities and convictions of its members, nevertheless the stresses and strains attendant upon the struggles over its initial establishment were, in its earliest years, never far from the surface. These anxieties in turn framed the process by which major decisions were ultimately made concerning AEA membership criteria, annual meetings, publications, and operational procedures; what is more, they made the Association's leadership particularly eager to seize upon whatever opportunities and circumstances within the public arena might enhance the prestige and sway of their field. …