Abstract
Theodore W. Schultz (1902–1998) was the Chair of the University of Chicago Department of Economics from 1946 to 1961, providing leadership during a period of transition and expansion. Trained in agricultural economics and connected to the policy universe engaged with farm politics in the US, Schultz quickly linked Chicago research projects to questions about international economic development that were posed and supported by the federal government, private foundations, and policy associations. He is best known for his research contributions to the concept of human capital and his critiques of theories and models in development economics. Awarded the Francis A. Walker Medal in 1972, he shared the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences with W. Arthur Lewis in 1979.
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Notes
- 1.
In Henry Simons’ memorandum to University of Chicago, President R.M. Hutchins on the “Hayek Project” aka the Free Market Project—to build a centre for the study of liberal political economy at the University—the agricultural economists are mentioned as fellow travellers who are not committed to the primary cause of advancing liberal political philosophy and policy ideas. Here, liberal is used in the Hayekian sense, in the restriction of the role of the State to the support and development of a market society. ‘Finally, there are our new agricultural economists who, while sympathetic, are real libertarians in name only’ (Simons to Hutchins, 19 May 1945, University of Chicago President’s Papers, 1940–1946, Regenstein Library Special Collections, University of Chicago: Box 5).
- 2.
‘It begins to look hopeful once again for thinking about ag policy, it could even become exciting, as exciting as it was during the latter half of the 1930s … Let me merely list a few issues that might get us going. 1. A New Deal for the Negroes in Agriculture. The protest movement by Negroes is a major new political force. It will open doors to many reforms. As yet no one has pointed up the reforms that would begin to help those Negroes who are still an integral part of US agriculture. They still number in the millions. They are, of course, in the South. Our NPA committee is not controlled by southern politicians as are so many of the key committees in Congress. We could agree on an exciting, path-breaking policy report on this matter’ (Schultz to Soth, 18 September 1963, TWSP, Regenstein Library Special Collections, University of Chicago: Box 5, Folder, “NPS Gen Corres, 1959–1966”).
References
Archival Sources
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Main Works by Theodore W. Schultz
Schultz, T.W. (1943). Redirecting Farm Policy. New York: Macmillan.
Schultz, T.W. (1945). Agriculture in an Unstable Economy. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Schultz, T.W. (1949). Production and Welfare for Agriculture. New York: Macmillan.
Schultz, T.W. (1953). The Economic Organization of Agriculture. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Schultz, T.W. (1956). The Economic Test in Latin America. Ithaca, NY: New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
Schultz, T.W. (1958). ‘The Emerging Economic Scene and Its Relation to High School Education’. In F.S. Chase and H. Anderson (eds) The High School in a New Era. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 97–109.
Schultz, T.W. (1960). ‘Capital Formation by Education’. Journal of Political Economy, 68(6): 571–583.
Schultz, T.W. (1961). ‘Investment in Human Capital’. American Economic Review, 51(1): 1–17.
Schultz, T.W. (1964). Transforming Traditional Agriculture. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Schultz, T.W. (1965). Economic Crises in World Agriculture. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Schultz, T.W. (1968) Economic Growth and Agriculture. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Schultz, T.W. (1971). Investment in Human Capital: The Role of Education and of Research. New York: Free Press.
Schultz, T.W. (ed.) (1974). Economics of the Family: Marriage, Children, and Human Capital: A Conference Report of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Schultz, T.W. (1981). Investing in People: The Economics of Population Quality. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Schultz, T.W. (1993). The Economics of Being Poor. Oxford: Blackwell.
Other Works Referred To
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Becker, G.S. (1964). Human Capital. New York: Columbia University Press.
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Burnett, P. (2011b). ‘The Price is Not Right: Theodore W. Schultz, Policy Planning, and Agricultural Economics in the Cold-War United States’. Chapter 3 in R. Van Horn, P. Mirowski and T.A. Stapleford (eds) Building Chicago Economics: New Perspectives on the History of America’s Most Powerful Economics Program. New York: Cambridge University Press: 67–92.
Chenery, H.B. (1975). ‘The Structuralist Approach to Development Policy’. American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings, 65(2): 310–316.
Easterly, W. (2001). The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Ezekiel, M. and L.H. Bean (1933). The Economic Bases of the Agricultural Adjustment Act. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.
Friedman, M. (1957). A Theory of the Consumption Function. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Gilbert, J. (2015). Planning Democracy: Agrarian Intellectuals and the Intended New Deal. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Griliches, Z. (1957). ‘Hybrid Corn: An Exploration in the Economics of Technical Change’. Econometrica, 25(4): 501–522.
Griliches, Z. (1958). ‘Research Costs and Social Returns: Hybrid Corn and Related Innovations’. Journal of Political Economy, 66(5): 419–431.
Klein, N. (2007). The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. New York: Holt and Co.
Krishna, R. (1963). ‘Farm Supply Response in India-Pakistan: A Case Study of the Punjab Region’. Economic Journal, 73(291): 477–487.
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Solow, R.M. (1957). ‘Technical Change and the Aggregate Production Function’. Review of Economics and Statistics, 39(3): 312–320.
The Farm Foundation (1952). Turning the Searchlight on Farm Policy. Chicago, IL: The Farm Foundation.
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Burnett, P. (2022). Theodore W. Schultz (1902–1998). In: Cord, R.A. (eds) The Palgrave Companion to Chicago Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-01775-9_17
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