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Show COLLEGE OF SOCIAL & BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE Ik Amelia Marstaller KorkutErturk COLLECTIVE COSTS DURING THE PROGRESSIVE ERA Amelia Marstaller (Korkut Erturk) Department of Economics University of Utah During the Progressive Era that stretched roughly from 1877-1928, the United States faced the social costs associated with market society. As corporate capitalism expanded and a national market replaced local economies, the role of the federal government changed to include mitigating collective costs by providing public goods. The Progressive Era represents the U.S.'s first national discussion on the role of the state in an industrialized nation. A collective action problem arose since individual agents had to act collectively to curb the ruinous effects of extreme competition. I use this historical backdrop to examine economic theories on h o w societies manage the costs of capitalism. I look at scholarship on collective action, spontaneous order, self-regulation and enforcement within economic systems, and explore h o w the Progressive Era exemplifies or refutes the theories on social and economic behavior. I trace the emergence of a national market from pre-industrial, local economies, and examine h o w in the national context citizenship, the newly powerful nation state and standardized treatment of collective costs played an essential role in establishing the market as the primary institution of 20th century America. The institutions supporting citizenship and facilitating market participation bolstered capitalism but also required significant oversight by the regulatory bureaucracy established during the Progressive Era. While mainstream economic theory minimizes the role of class interests and power dynamics by assuming freedom of contract and costless enforcement of property rights, recent work in economics invokes sociology and history to illuminate the barriers to collective action. Today's most illuminating theories revive the thought processes of the early, classical political economists, and I use the Progressive Era to explore the extent to which their theories on collective cost management describe the case of U.S. industrialization. 82 |
