Abstract
Economics in the United States before 1885 was not a discipline of credentialled professionals. Its debates were published in political pamphlets and newspaper editorials as well as college textbooks and scholarly treatises. Its principal project was to set the boundaries of a doctrinal system of economic liberalism and determine the appropriate functions of government. The system was characterized by the sanctity of private property, the celebration of individual labour, and the harmony of the economic and moral orders. Those parts of the system that were imported from abroad were adapted, sometimes ingeniously, to economic and political circumstances at home.
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Meardon, S. (2018). United States, Economics in (1776–1885). In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_2527
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_2527
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