Beginning in 1912, a number of states passed minimum wage legislation that applied exclusively to women and minors. These tentative experiments in economic legislation ended in 1923 when the Supreme Court overturned the District of Columbia's minimum wage law. Remarkably, at this time virtually...

John Maynard Keynes argued that when the conditions for rational action are not present, people are driven by "animal spirits." This article briefly considers Keynes' argument, and the history of the term.

In writings about the history of the use of mathematical expression in economics, there seems to be a conviction that the movement towards its current flowering was cumulative, inevitable, and indeed, natural. While, such notions are widely held among practicing economists, I want to argue that...

Roy Radner has been elected a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association. To illustrate the Radner style, I have chosen the example of his turnpike theorem, even though this is not quite illustrative of his central concerns. I shall follow this with a brief survey of his...

This paper summarizes the research contributions of Lawrence Summers, who was awarded the 1993 John Bates Clark Medal by the American Economic Association. It focuses on research in four subfields of economics: public finance, labor economies, financial economies, and macroeconomics. The paper...

The economics of Leon H. Keyserling influenced the Roosevelt era in terms of housing, agriculture, labor, and antitrust legislation. During the Truman era, discussed herein, Keyserling was influential as chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, stressing long-term growth, general and selective...