Larry,

I don't know if this is accurate.  But when I studied with him, Kenneth Boulding told me that his textbook was the first textbook that made the micro/macro split.  I believe that book came out in the late 1940s prior to Sameulson's book.  If Boulding had the split in Economic Analysis, then it must have been the emerging practice.  I would look around the date of those publications in the 1940s.

But the first edition of Samuelson's book, has the macro chapters upfront prior to the microeconomics chapters.  I believe that became the standard practice for years.

Alchian and Allen fought against that trend of macro first, but it was not a successful text in terms of wide-scale adoption in the 1960s. But it did become a standard reference text for a generation of the counter-revolutionaries to the Neo-Keynesian synthesis --- property rights, public choice, new economic history, etc.

I believe Gwartney and Stroup is the first text that has some success that moved micro prior to macro once again.  And that is in the 1970s.

Peter J. Boettke
BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism at the Mercatus Center, George Mason University
&
University Professor & Professor of Economics
Department of Economics, MSN 3G4
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
Phone: 703-993-1149
FAX: 703-993-1133
Email: [log in to unmask]
http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/pboettke
http://www.coordinationproblem.org


----- Original Message -----
From: Lawrence Boland <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Saturday, July 17, 2010 9:15 pm
Subject: Re: [SHOE] Question about micro vs macro classes

> Several have suggested that I look at catalogs.
> 
> Actually, I have looked at the calendars for my undergraduate and 
> graduateuniversities -- 1957 and '61 for the former, and '61 and 
> '65 for the latter. In
> none of them were there micro or macro courses by title. In '57 and 
> '61undergraduate calendars there were none even by description. 
> However, in both,
> there was classes in intermediate "price theory" and intermediate 
> "nationalincome analysis". For graduate school in '61, there were 
> two classes in "general
> economic theory", neither of which mentions micro or macro as they 
> have the same
> description. When it came to '65 the titles were the same but one 
> mentions"general micro-economic theory" and the other "a review of 
> Keynesianmacro-economics".
> 
> I have the fourth edition (1958) of Samuelson's textbook (which I 
> used in '61).
> He mentions micro vs macro on only two pages, the first of which he 
> promoted the
> neoclassical synthesis to say the "cleavage between [them] has been 
> closed" (p.
> 360).
> 
> Does anyone have the first edition? My school is too new to have a 
> library copy.
> 
> 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
>