John R. Commons and Irving Fisher: Contrasting Methodologies but Allies in Policy Reform

The institutionalist economist John R. Commons of the University of Wisconsin and his contemporary, the neoclassical economist Irving Fisher of Yale University, had contrasting approaches to economic methodology. Nonetheless, despite their different theoretical approaches, Commons and Fisher had a long, fruitful collaboration in campaigning for reforms in public policy. They collaborated through the American Association for Labor Legislation (AALL) and through organizations that sought to replace the gold exchange standard with a mandate for price-level stabilization. The AALL, the leading research and advocacy organization promoting the “Wisconsin Idea” Progressive agenda of policy reform at the national level, was not an exclusively institutionalist initiative but instead was made more effective by enlisting a group of non-institutional economists in support of Progressive ideas. Fisher advanced an extensive agenda of policy reform, with a central role for universal, compulsory health insurance, in his presidential addresses to the AALL and the American Economic Association. In addition to Fisher’s participation with Commons in the AALL, Commons’s role in the price-level stabilization campaign is shown by his many appearances in Fisher’s Stable Money: A History of the Movement (1934). The methodological differences between Commons and Fisher did not prevent their policy collaboration in the AALL and the stable money movement.