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Call it a revolution or not, big changes in the way economics was done were 
taking place in the years surrounding World War II. The "revolution" was 
spread over different areas of economics. Some of the initiatives failed, 
such as the empirical program at the Cowles Commission, but they certainly 
left their marks. 
 
The Chicago attempt at "counter-revolution" began with Milton Friedman's 
brief review (1941) of Robert Triffin's _Monopolistic Competition and 
General Equilibrium Theory_.  Triffin argued that monopolistic competition 
was born in the Marshallian framework but was growing up in the Walrasian 
framework, and this was an important step in "the historical process of 
purification and formalization of economics." Friedman defended Marshallian 
industries, which were being thrown overboard. Later George Stigler joined 
the defense with his  University of London lecture (_Five Lectures on 
Economic Problems_, 1949). 
 
For the rest of this story see chapter 2 of my _Theory and Measurement_(1996). 
 
 
 
 
 
Dan Hammond 
Department of Economics 
Wake Forest University 
Winston-Salem, NC 27109 
Phone: 910-759-5335 
FAX: 910-759-6028 
 
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