For an equivalent study of an issue like this see Steve Fienberg's article:

http://ba.stat.cmu.edu/journal/2006/vol01/issue01/fienberg.pdf

When Did Bayesian Inference Become "Bayesian"?

Steve used the full text word search in JSTOR to trace the development 
of the term "Bayesian".  A similar approach  would probably work here 
for a systematic analysis of the  micro/macro terminology

Margo Anderson
History & Urban Studies
University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee


Womack, John wrote:
> The article both the OED and JSTOR claim is the first to use the term microeconomic is Martin Bronfenbrenner, "The Role of Money in Equilibrium Capital Theory," Econometrica, XI, 1 (January 1943), 35-60. See in particular page 53, where he refers to "The so-called microeconomic techniques of the Lausanne School," as compared with "macroeconomic techniques," and goes on about Keynes and Lange.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Societies for the History of Economics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of mason gaffney
> Sent: Saturday, July 17, 2010 9:33 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [SHOE] Question about micro vs macro classes
>
> I fully agree with Arthur Edwards that we should stop dividing micro and
> macro. What ties them together is capital theory; a macro glitch could be
> summed up as a massive misallocation of capital and land.  If anyone cares,
> please ask me to cite chapter and verse.
>
> I am dubious of Edwards' implication (if that was his intention, which is
> not crystal clear) that this is part of a dirigiste plot to aggrandize
> government officials. That doesn't sound like something Galbraith would
> condemn, anyway, but rather something that some teabagger would accuse him
> of. I hope Edwards will clarify his point, and/or Galbraith's.
>
> Anyway, I suggest a different origin for the divide.  Step One, leading
> economists in the 1930's were embarrassed and discredited by their serious
> failures to anticipate the crash, and to suggest remedies. Step Two, along
> came Keynes, resurrecting the ancient public works solutions, and attracting
> a huge following. The old timers were trained to preach free markets and
> austerity for labor, and had tenure and seniority, so to compromise they let
> young Turks teach fiscal policy, and old fossils teach free markets: macro
> and micro, two half-separate disciplines. 
>
> Micro could logically about this time have evolved into Industrial
> Organization, a study of how markets were really operating. This would have
> elevated Institutionalists to power, teaching Berle and Means, Commons,
> Clarence Ayres, TNEC Reports, J.K. Galbraith himself, the need for
> regulations and price controls ... not the kind of things that Regents et
> al. like to foster. So Micro added Chamberlin and Robinson's Imperfect and
> Monopolistic Competition to their "kit of tools", to trivialize all that
> while appearing to be dealing with it - "death by abstraction and modeling",
> one might say. Macro, meantime, also dismissed questions of I/O into a
> little pen called "structural problems", treated with disdain. And I/O
> itself became a separate discipline for those who didn't mind having their
> careers stunted. Along came math modeling and econometrics to downgrade
> studies of structural problems that might be hard to quantify, and to
> exclude more laymen from understanding the mysteries inside the great
> economic motor. 
>
> Along the way there were of course many other changes - nothing is as simple
> as that sketch above. One major change that I deplore was to remove
> Distribution from curricula, and replace it with "Growth". "Distribution"
> itself, the residual still taught, was 90% personal distribution, omitting
> functional distribution that had been so central to classical economics.
> Diminishing returns and production economics, which used to introduce
> students to marginal analysis, have been replaced by "supply and demand" at
> the beginning of every commercial text - factor proportions might as well be
> constant, markets solve all problems.  And personal distribution is centered
> mainly on "income", a catchword rarely defined carefully, but in practice
> omitting much of property income and overstating wage and salary incomes. O
> Tempora, O Mores - I'd better quit here! Except to shake up all this mess
> and begin again, let's integrate micro and macro!
>
> Mason Gaffney
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Societies for the History of Economics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Arthur Edwards
> Sent: Saturday, July 17, 2010 11:48 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [SHOE] Question about micro vs macro classes
>
> Galbraith describes the micro / macro distinction as 'one of the  
> intellectually suffocating errors of modern economics.'
>
> "The point of the analogy between macro and micro economic aspects is  
> that we can no longer continue with the dangerous notion that these  
> represent two different realities. Galbraith, attributing this stark  
> distinction to Keynes, describes it as 'one of the intellectually  
> suffocating errors of modern economics.' (1987:295) One can concur  
> with Galbraith's view, since, whatever its author's intentions, a main  
> effect of a construct that divides the economy in two in this way is  
> to give rise to the idea that whatever individuals do and think is not  
> really important. Indeed, macroeconomics deliberately aggregates and  
> simplifies this element, encouraging the belief that the big picture  
> has to be left to governments and experts, and behind them the  
> wondrous workings of the invisible hand. We should, rather, see the  
> macro and micro as two ends of a spectrum. Far from referring to  
> separate worlds, they are two ways of addressing the one reality. "
> Galbraith, J.K. (1987) A History of Economics, London: Hamish Hamilton.
>
> FROM: Money, Bookkeeping and the Inherent Ethics of Accounting. 11th  
> World Congress of Social Economics. Albertville, France, June 2004.  
> Christopher Houghton Budd
>
> Arthur Edwards
>
> On 16 Jul 2010, at 21:16, Lawrence Boland wrote:
>
>   
>> I am working on a book about model building and wanted to note when  
>> separate micro and macro classes were first taught. I have asked  
>> many senior economists starting with Ken Arrow and Dick Lipsey and  
>> accept for Ken remembering that he taught one in 1949, not much else  
>> has been uncovered.
>>
>> I looked at my undergraduate and graduate catalogs but these only  
>> show recognition in the early 1960 (interestingly, not the earliest  
>> ones but only in the year I graduated).
>>
>> The question now is when did separate and explicitly micro and macro  
>> courses first appear in an economics curriculum (not counting  
>> business cycles type course)? Obviously in the 1940s in North  
>> America (but Dick thinks only in the 1950s in Great Britain) -- but  
>> where and what year? Any ideas? Does anyone have a catalog or  
>> calendar that lists separate courses in the 1940s?
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> LB
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> Lawrence A. Boland, FRSC
>> Department of Economics, Simon Fraser University
>> Burnaby BC Canada V5A-1S6
>> ph: 778-782-4487, web: http://www.sfu.ca/~boland
>>