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The relationship of engineering to economic thought in the U.S. in the late 
19th and early 20th centuries is a complex and fascinating topic.  For 
starters, see Thorstein Veblen's Theory of Business Enterprise (1904) and 
his The Engineers and the Price System (1921).  There are a number of 
articles that deal with Veblen's work.  With bias I suggest,  Janet 
Knoedler and Anne Mayhew, Thorstein Veblen and the Engineers: A 
Reinterpretation,  History of Political Economy, 31:2 (Summer 1999): 
254-272  both for interpretation and for citations. 
 
William Barber's From New Era to New Deal:  Herbert Hoover, the Economists, 
and American Economic Policy 1921-1933 (1985) provides an excellent account 
of the relationship of Herbert Hoover as engineer to the formation of 
economic policy.  It is a fascinating story in which the ideas of a most 
unlikely pair, Herbert Hoover and Thorstein Veblen, overlap as a 
consequence of a long interplay between engineering and American economic 
thought. 
 
A Journal of Economic Literature survey article by Bela Gold, "Changing 
Perspectives on Size, Scale and returns: An Interpretive Survey," [XIX, 
March 1981, 5-33 carries part of the story forward and provides useful 
citations. 
 
 
Anne Mayhew 
 
 
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