ABSTRACT OF PAPER
Title: A Difficult and Tenuous Thing: The Rise and Fall of Public Interest as an Element of Economic Discourse in America
Author: Christ Kevin
This essay recounts the rise and fall of public interest as an element of American economic discourse. After a younger generation of late 19th century American economists developed their own meaning of the term, and after it came into general usage in the early part of the 20th century, it generally fell from grace after 1950, and since the 1990s has virtually disappeared as a construct in economics. This essay documents a reinterpretation of the term as part of the reaction of a younger generation of American economists in the late 19th century to what they perceived as an overly simplistic adherence to the doctrine of laissez faire. The decline in use of the term within economics begins in the 1950s with a reaction against its unscientific nature and coincides with changing views on the appropriate scope of government in a market system. Disagreements over the relevance of public interest to economic analysis are bound up with ongoing controversies over individual versus collective decision making, the primacy of private property rights over social considerations, and the doctrine of laissez faire.
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