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CALL FOR PAPERS 
 
2005 Duke HOPE Conference 
 
Agreement on Demand: 
 
The History of 20th Century Demand Theory 
 
 
Philip Mirowski and D. Wade Hands 
 
April 22-24, Duke University 
 
 
While many broad statements have been made concerning the nature and 
causes of the transformation of the microeconomic orthodoxy in America 
in WWII and after by the participants, there has been very little work 
by historians evaluating their generalizations and proposing their own 
narratives. The purpose of this conference is to redirect the skills, 
attention and competencies of some intellectual historians and some 
historically-inclined economists to explore the trajectory of a 
(probably the) key component of neoclassical microeconomics, viz., 
demand theory, primarily but not exclusively of the American variety, 
from roughly the 1930s through to the end of the century. While this 
implicitly selects the Walrasian general equilibrium tradition and Nash 
game theory as primary foci of attention at the conference, we shall 
seek to pose a number of questions about the orthodoxy that would 
transcend the few existing accounts that treat those developments as 
obvious extrapolations of pre-1930s neoclassical price theory. It seems 
now accepted that only in the central decades of the 20th century did 
economists stabilize their referents to the theory of demand. These 
questions would include the following: 
 
How significant in practice was the role of the Walrasian tradition 
(versus, say, the Marshallian) in the rise of the American orthodoxy in 
demand theory? 
 
How did the boundaries of 'the market' and hence the subject matter of 
economics come to be platted so distinctively in the US and elsewhere? 
 
To what extent was the "Law of Demand" held to be an explicitly 
neoclassical proposition?  
 
How should one understand the frequent repudiations of psychology 
throughout the period?  
 
How did the actual process of exchange become downplayed, and later 
revived?  
 
How did a program subscribing to the centrality of the individual come 
to endorse a generic undifferentiated conception of agency?  
 
What was the significance of the shift of the governing image of the 
market to that of an information processor? 
 
  
 
While these tend to be quasi-philosophical questions, we are also 
looking for detailed historical investigations into topics like: 
 
Was there a distinctive tradition at mid-century of price theory at 
Chicago, MIT, Cowles and elsewhere? What happened to them? 
 
What were the implications of the Sonnenschein/Mantel/Debreu theorems, 
the no-trade theorems, the Scarf counterexample, and other 'anomalies' 
generated within the period? 
 
What were the reactions to 'rationality-free' attempts to provide 
alternative grounding for the law of demand, such as efforts by Gary 
Becker, Werner Hildenbrand, William Starbuck, Alan Kirman, and others? 
 
Did the various attempts at large-scale structural econometric 
estimation of demand systems erode support for the program? 
 
Was the mid-century Walrasian orthodoxy more concerned with 
'equilibrium' than with the process aspects of exchange, and did 
developments like the 'microstructure' literature in finance or the 
Smithian program within experimental economics serve to change this? 
 
What happened to research agendas in demand theory such as the 
'atomless agents' approach, the mechanism design literature, the 
Carnegie simulation approach, and others? To what extent did these 
programs or others tend to alter the notion of 'agency'? 
 
Has the modern movement to produce 'designer markets' (FCC auctions, 
specialized e-commerce markets, emissions trading) altered the 
configuration of demand theory? 
 
Was the 'Ordinal Revolution' really so very revolutionary?  
 
How did the vicissitudes of 'welfare economics' feed back on the 
evolution of demand theory? 
 
To what extent did the "consistency revolution" associated with the 
revealed preference theory of Samuelson and others constitute a 
revolution in demand theory? 
 
What effect did the American neoclassical orthodoxy have upon 
indigenous schools of demand theory in other countries? 
 
 
The purpose of this conference is to convene interested parties who 
possess a dual commitment to work through the history of some technical 
issues, but also a willingness to discuss the larger implications of 
these developments both for economists and their clientele.  
 
The conference will take place at Duke University, Durham, NC, on April 
22-24. Proposals for papers (1000 words maximum) should be sent to both 
the organizers (contact information below). The deadline for proposals 
is September 15, 2004. Papers will be selected and authors notified by 
September 30, 2004. In keeping with the Duke tradition, all conference 
sessions are plenary and presentations will be limited in number and 
allotted time to allow for maximum discussion. Papers will be 
circulated in advance, and therefore drafts must be delivered to the 
organizers no later than March 1, 2005. Following the conference, 
papers will be selected and refereed for inclusion in a special 
supplement to History of Political Economy, published in hardcover 
volume by Duke University Press. Participation in the conference 
entails conceding first refusal rights for publication to the editors 
and HOPE.  
 
For further information, or to submit a proposal, please contact Philip 
Mirowski, 400 Decio Hall, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 
46554, tel. 574-631-7580 (email [log in to unmask] ) and D. Wade Hands, 
Department of Economics, University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, WA, 98416, 
253-879-3592 (email [log in to unmask]).  
 
 
D. Wade Hands 
Department of Economics 
University of Puget Sound 
 
Tacoma, WA, 98416