The Chicago School

This “admirably detailed and thoroughly welcome history” provides a fascinating examination of a pivotal moment in the evolution of economic theory (The Economist). When Richard Nixon said “We are all Keynesians now” in 1971, few could have predicted that the next three decades would result in a complete transformation of the global economic landscape. The transformation was led by a small, relatively obscure group within the University of Chicago’s business school and its departments of economics and political science. These thinkers — including Milton Friedman, Gary Becker, George Stigler, Robert Lucas, and others — revolutionized economic orthodoxy in the second half of the 20th century, dominated the Nobel Prizes awarded in economics, and changed how business is done around the world. Written by a leading European economic thinker, The Chicago School is the first in-depth look at how this remarkable group came together. Exhaustively detailed, it provides a close recounting of the decade-by-decade progress of the Chicago School’s evolution. As such, it’s an essential contribution to the intellectual history of our time.

From 1915 to 1935 the inventive community of social scientists at the University of Chicago pioneered empirical research and a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods, shaping the future of twentieth-century American sociology and related fields as well. Martin Bulmer's history of the Chicago school of sociology describes the university's role in creating research-based and publication-oriented graduate schools of social science. "This is an important piece of work on the history of sociology, but it is more than merely historical: Martin Bulmer's undertaking is also to explain why historical events occurred as they did, using potentially general theoretical ideas. He has studied what he sees as the period, from 1915 to 1935, when the 'Chicago School' most flourished, and defines the nature of its achievements and what made them possible . . . It is likely to become the indispensible historical source for its topic."—Jennifer Platt, Sociology

In 1989, Chicago began an experiment with radical decentralization of power and authority. Intertwining extensive narratives and rigorous quantitative analyses, this book tells the story of what happened to Chicagos elementary schools in the first four years of this reform. }In 1989, Chicago began an experiment with radical decentralization of power and authority. This book tells the story of what happened to Chicagos elementary schools in the first four years of this reform. Implicit in this reform is the theory that expanded local democratic participation would stimulate organizational change within schools, which in turn would foster improved teaching and learning. Using this theory as a framework, the authors marshal massive quantitative and qualitative data to examine how the reform actually unfolded at the school level.With longitudinal case study data on 22 schools, survey responses from principals and teachers in 269 schools, and supplementary system-wide administrative data, the authors identify four types of school politics: strong democracy, consolidated principal power, maintenance, and adversarial. In addition, they classify school change efforts as either systemic or unfocused. Bringing these strands together, the authors determine that, in about a third of the schools, expanded local democratic participation served as a strong lever for introducing systemic change focused on improved instruction. Finally, case studies of six actively restructuring schools illustrate how under decentralization the principals role is recast, social support for change can grow, and ideas and information from external sources are brought to bear on school change initiatives. Few studies intertwine so completely extensive narratives and rigorous quantitative analyses. The result is a complex picture of the Chicago reform that joins the politics of local control to school change.This volume is intended for scholars in the fields of urban education, public policy, sociology of education, anthropology of education, and politics of education. Comprehensive and descriptive, it is an engaging text for graduate students and upper-level undergraduates. Local, state, and federal policymakers who are concerned with urban education will find new and insightful material. The book should be on reading lists and in professional development seminars for school principals who want to garner community support for change and for school community leaders who want more responsive local institutions. Finally, educators, administrators, and activists in Chicago will appreciate this detailed analysis of the early years of reform.

How the Chicago School Overshot the Mark is about the rise and recent fall of American antitrust. It is a collection of 15 essays, almost all expressing a deep concern that conservative economic analysis is leading judges and enforcement officials toward an approach that will ultimately harm consumer welfare. For the past 40 years or so, U.S. antitrust has been dominated intellectually by an unusually conservative style of economic analysis. Its advocates, often referred to as "The Chicago School," argue that the free market (better than any unelected band of regulators) can do a better job of achieving efficiency and encouraging innovation than intrusive regulation. The cutting edge of Chicago School doctrine originated in academia and was popularized in books by brilliant and innovative law professors like Robert Bork and Richard Posner. Oddly, a response to that kind of conservative doctrine may be put together through collections of scores of articles but until now cannot be found in any one book. This collection of essays is designed in part to remedy that situation. The chapters in this book were written by academics, former law enforcers, private sector defense lawyers, Republicans and Democrats, representatives of the left, right and center. Virtually all agree that antitrust enforcement today is better as a result of conservative analysis, but virtually all also agree that there have been examples of extreme interpretations and misinterpretations of conservative economic theory that have led American antitrust in the wrong direction. The problem is not with conservative economic analysis but with those portions of that analysis that have "overshot the mark" producing an enforcement approach that is exceptionally generous to the private sector. If the scores of practices that traditionally have been regarded as anticompetitive are ignored, or not subjected to vigorous enforcement, prices will be higher, quality of products lower, and innovation diminished. In the end consumers will pay.

Jane Addams is well known for her leadership in urban reform, social settlements, pacifism, social work, and women's suffrage.The men of the Chicago School are well known for their leadership in founding sociology and the study of urban life.What has remained hidden however, is that Jane Addams played a pivotal role in the development of sociology and worked closely with the male faculty at the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. By using extensive archival material, Mary Jo Deegan is the first to document Addams's sociological significance and the existence of a sexual division of labor during the founding years of the discipline. As the leader of the women's network, Addams was able to bridge these two spheres of work and knowledge.Through an analysis of the changing relations between the male and female networks, Deegan shows that the Chicago men varied widely in their understanding and acceptance of her sociological though and action.Despite this variation, it was through her work with the men of the Chicago School that Addams left a legacy for sociology as a way of thinking, an area of study, and a methodological approach to data collecting. This previously unexamined heritage of American sociology will be of value to anyone interested in the history of the social sciences, especially sociology and social work, the development of American social thought, the role of professional women, the Progressive Era, and the intellectual contributions of Jane Addams.

From 1945 to about 1960, the University of Chicago was home to a group of faculty and graduate students whose work has come to define what many call a second "Chicago School" of sociology. Like its predecessor earlier in the century, the postwar department was again the center for qualitative social research—on everything from mapping the nuances of human behavior in small groups to seeking solutions to problems of race, crime, and poverty. Howard Becker, Joseph Gusfield, Herbert Blumer, David Riesman, Erving Goffman, and others created a large, enduring body of work. In this book, leading sociologists critically confront this legacy. The eight original chapters survey the issues that defined the department's agenda: the focus on deviance, race and ethnic relations, urban life, and collective behavior; the renewal of participant observation as a method and the refinement of symbolic interaction as a guiding theory; and the professional and institutional factors that shaped this generation, including the leadership of Louis Wirth and Everett C. Hughes; the role of women; and the competition for national influence Chicago sociology faced from survey research at Columbia and grand theory at Harvard. The contributors also discuss the internal conflicts that call into question the very idea of a unified "school."

The birth of the skyscraper in Chicago in the mid-1880s introduced a new direction for city architecture: upwards. But how-and why- was it that Chicago set the standard for high-rise buildings, not only across the USA but all over the world? Rolf Achilles here introduces the style of the First Chicago School from 1880 to 1910, explaining the innovative use of iron frames for strength, height and openness, and the ubiquity of gridded window arrangements. With reference to such famous architects as William Le Baron Jenny and Frank Lloyd Wright, and colorful pictures of, among many others, the Reliance, Brooks and Marquette buildings, this book is a fascinating exploration of the structures that helped to give Chicago its identity, and the world a new way of building.

This book tells the extraordinary story of the Pinochet regime's economists, known as the "Chicago Boys". It explores the roots of their ideas and their sense of mission, following their training as economists at the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago. After their return to Chile, the "Chicago Boys" took advantage of the opportunity afforded them by the 1973 military coup to launch the first radical free market strategy implemented in a developing country. The ideological strength of their mission and the military authoritarianism of General Pinochet combined to transform an economy that, following the return to democracy, has stabilized and is now seen as a model for Latin America. This book, written by a political scientist, examines the neo-liberal economists and their perspective on the market. It also narrates the history of the transfer of ideas from the industrialized world to a developing country, which will be of particular interest to economists.