Draft:Department of Economics, The New School

The Department of Economics, The New School is an academic department of The New School, within The New School for Social Research. The faculty has contributed to economic theories such as, Post-Keynesiam, Marxian, Institutional, Structuralist, and Political economics.

The Founding Economists (1919-1933)
The New School for Social Research was founded in 1919 by a group of progressive intellectuals (mostly from Columbia University and The New Republic) who had grown dissatisfied with the growing bureaucracy and fragmentation of higher education in the United States. In its earliest manifestation, The New School was an adult education institution that gave night lectures to fee-paying students. There were no admissions requirements and The New School did not confer degrees.

The first set of lectures included courses by economists Thorstein Veblen, Wesley Clair Mitchell, and Harold Laski, though these economists did not remain on the faculty long. In the ensuing decade, the New School hosted courses by a diverse array of economists, including Leo Wolman, a labor statistician with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, and Frederick Macaulay, who later formalized the financial concept Bond Duration. During this period, John Maynard Keynes and Benjamin Graham also gave guest lectures at The New School. One lasting presence at the New School was the economist-turned-administrator Alvin Johnson, who was the school's first President.

University in Exile (1933-1960)
In response to the Nazi Germany's 1933 Civil Service Restoration Act, an act that dismissed over 1,200 Jewish or radical academics from German state-run institutions, Alvin Johnson raised $120,000 from Hiram Halle to create a "University in Exile" at The New School comprised of the dismissed European academics. The initial group included Emil Lederer, Frieda Wunderlich, Hans Staudinger, Eduard Heimann, Karl Brandt, Hans Simons and Gerhard Colm. A second wave of academics fleeing Europe after France fell to the Nazis in 1939 included Adolph Lowe, Jacob Marschak, Abba Lerner, Franco Modigliani, Hans Neisser, and Emil J. Gumbel.

In 1934, the émigré faculty received a provisional charter from the State of New York to grant graduate degrees. With the charter, the faculty changed their name from the University in Exile to the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science. The faculty taught night classes in English to New Yorkers. In 1935, there were 150 registered graduate students; in 1940, this had grown to 520 students. Prior to 1960, the Graduate Faculty was not split into academic departments. Many faculty had interests that crossed disciplinary boundaries, from economics into sociology or philosophy. Accordingly, students (like Franco Modigliani) received M.Sc.'s and D.Sc.'s in the Social Sciences rather than in Economics, Psychology, or Sociology.

Economics Department (1960-Present)
From 1958 to 1963, The New School suffered from another budgetary crisis. The school was running a deficit that it could not repay. Economists and administrators Alvin Johnson and Hans Staudinger led a "Save the School" fundraising campaign that narrowly saved the school from bankruptcy. In order to make the school more conventional and fundable, the administration reorganized the Graduate Faculty into five departments: Economics, Psychology, Sociology, Philosophy, and Political Science. This reorganization began in the late 1950's, but was only solidified in the 1960 course catalogs.

As the German émigrés retired, the Economics department began to appoint new economists, beginning with David Schwartzman, an industrial organization economist who had studied with Milton Friedman and George Stigler, and Thomas Vietorisz, a specialist in the economics of planning.

In 1968, Robert Heilbroner (Ph.D., 1963) was appointed assistant Professor of Economics. Heilbroner had, while a graduate student at The New School, published The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Great Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers. The Worldly Philosophers was inspired by a class on Adam Smith taught by Heilbroner's teacher, Adolph Lowe. In the book, Heilbroner discusses the evolution of economic thought using of the lives and times of the great economists. This focus on the history of economic thought permeated Heilbroner's teaching and writing.

In 1969 and 1970, Edward Nell and Stephen Hymer were appointed to the faculty. Nell's work focused on economic methodology and Post-Keynesian Economics while Hymer was a Marxian economist whose Ph.D. supervisor was Charles Kindleberger.

Together, the faculty launched a graduate program in Political Economy in 1971. In the May 1971 press release, Heilbroner emphasized that the goal of the faculty was to give students training in a variety of traditions of economic analysis. In 1972 and 1973, the faculty hired Anwar Shaikh and David Gordon, two young and radical economists with divergent approaches to economics: Shaikh initially focused on international trade and Marxian economic theory while Gordon focused on labor research and econometric models. In 1974, Heidi Hartmann joined the faculty to develop a gender and economics program. In 1975, Paul Sweezy taught a course on Karl Marx.

In the late 1970's, Gita Sen, Ross Thomson, and Willi Semmler joined the faculty. In 1982, John Eatwell joined the Department on a part-time arrangement. During the 1980's and 1990's, the faculty had many shorter-term appointments and visitors, including Nancy Folbre, Heinz Kurz, Rhonda Williams, Alice Amsden, and Thomas Palley.

In the 1990's, the department hired a number of faculty who would remain for decades: William Milberg, Lance Taylor, and Duncan Foley. In 1995, David Gordon, John Eatwell, and Bill Janeway together founded the Center for Economic Policy Analysis (CEPA), though Gordon died soon after founding CEPA.

In 2004, the student union founded The New School Economic Review, a student run peer-reviewed journal.

Graduate Programs
The Economics Department currently offers four graduate degree programs:

In addition, graduate students elsewhere in The New School can earn a Graduate Minor in "Methods and Concepts of Political Economy" by taking classes in the department.
 * MA in Global Political Economy and Finance
 * MA in Economics
 * MS in Economics
 * Ph.D. in Economics

Undergraduate Instruction
The Department of Economics also offers an undergraduate major and minor in economics to students of Lang College, The New School's undergraduate college.

Research Centers / Initiatives
The Department of Economics is home to the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA), currently directed by Professor Teresa Ghilarducci. SCEPA is a New York City based policy research think tank whose research currently focuses on retirement equity, climate change economics, and critical economics.

Two more research centers are run by faculty of the department: the Robert Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies, currently directed by Professor William Milberg, and the Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy, currently directed by Professor Darrick Hamilton.

List of Faculty
All the information provided below on the faculty is sourced from the New School Archives' Digital Course Catalog Collection, unless otherwise noted. The parentheticals denote the dates that the below faculty taught at The New School.

Current Faculty
Willi Semmler (1980-Present)

David Howell (1987-Present)

William Milberg (1991-Present)

Darrick Hamilton (2003-2019, 2021-Present)

Teresa Ghilarducci (2008-Present)

Sanjay Reddy (2009-Present)

Mark Setterfield (2014-Present)

Paulo Dos Santos (2014-Present)

Clara Mattei (2016-Present)

Ying Chen (2016-Present)

Kirsten Munro (2023-Present)

Nikolaos Chatzarakis (2023-Present)

Former Faculty
Alvin Johnson (1919-1945)

Wesley Clair Mitchell (1919-1922)

Thorstein Veblen (1919-1926)

Harold Laski (1919-1919)

Leo Wolman (1919-1930)

Herbert J. Davenport (1922-1922)

Frederick Macaulay (1922-1927)

Walton Hamilton (1929-1932)

Arthur Feiler (1933-1942)

Eduard Heimann (1933-1961)

Emil Lederer (1933-1939)

Frieda Wunderlich (1933-1961)

Gerhard Colm (1933-1939)

Karl Brandt (1933-1937)

Alfred Kahler (1934-1982)

Fritz Lehmann (1934-1940)

Hans Staudinger (1934-1959)

Hans Simons (1935-1960)

Adolph Lowe (1940-1983)

Jacob Marschak (1940-1943)

Abba Lerner (1943-1947)

Hans Neisser (1943-1975)

Franco Modigliani (1946-1947)

David Schwartzmann (1960-2006)

Robert Heilbroner (1963-1993)

Thomas Vietorisz (1963-1995)

Paul H. Douglas (1967-1969)

Michael Hudson (1969-1972)

Edward Nell (1969-2014)

Stephen Hymer (1970-1974)

Anwar Shaikh (1972-2022)

David Gordon (1973-1996)

Heidi Hartmann (1974-1976)

Gita Sen (1978-1982)

Ross Thomson (1977-1990)

John Eatwell (1982-1996)

Howard Stanback (1983-1986)

Michel Juillard (1983-1991)

Nancy Folbre (1983-1985)

Nilufer Cagatay (1983-1989)

Gunseli Berik (1985-1993)

Heinz Kurz (1985-1991)

Rhonda Williams (1987-1993)

Alice Amsden (1989-1993)

Thomas Palley (1991-1997)

Lance Taylor (1993-2022)

Duncan Foley (1999-2022)

Deepak Nayyar (2008-2012)

Vela Velupillai (2013-2015)

Past Visiting Faculty
Emil J. Gumbel (1943-1960)

Julius Hirsch (1942-1960)

Franco Modigliani (1943-1946)

Hans W. Singer (1948-1960)

Haskell P. Wald (1956-1962)

Robert Heilbroner (1963-1968)

Harry Magdoff (1967)

Peter L. Bernstein (1969, 1974)

Paul Sweezy (1975)

Makoto Itoh (1978)

Ernest Mandel (1978)

Jan Kregel (1979, 2023)

Suzanne de Brunhoff (1981)

Bertram Schefold (1983)*

Gerard Dumenil (1984)

Volker Caspari (1984)*

Pierangelo Garegnani (1987-1990)

Heinz Kurz (1990)*

Martin Hollis (1995)

Salih Neftci (1997-2009)

Stephan Seiter (1999)*

Michael Piore (2000-2001)

Stefan Mittnik (2012)*

Stephan Klasen (2013)*

Stephanie Kelton (2018)

* Denotes the Professors whose visit was funded by the Heuss Professorship and Lectureship, a program funded by the German government in honor of the German academics that The New School hosted within the University in Exile

Notable Alumni
All the information provided below on the faculty is sourced from Proquest's dissertation archive, unless otherwise noted. The parentheticals denote the dates that the students earned their dissertations.

Franco Modigliani (Ph.D., 1944) - Dissertation: The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money Under the Assumptions of Flexible Prices and of Fixed Prices

Robert Heilbroner (Ph.D., 1963) - Dissertation: The Making of Economic Society

Franklin Delano Roosevelt III (Ph.D., 1976) - Dissertation: Towards a Marxist Critique of the Cambridge School

Robert Pollin (Ph.D., 1982) - Dissertation: Corporate Financial Structures and the Crisis of U.S. Capitalism

Eduardo Ochoa (Ph.D., 1984) - Dissertation: Labor Values and Prices of Production: An Interindustry study of the US Economy 1947-1972

Dimitri B. Papadimitriou (Ph.D., 1988) - Dissertation: The structure of the Greek economy: 1958-1977. An empirical analysis of Marxian economics

Patrick Mason (Ph.D., 1991) - Dissertation: Competition, noncompensating wage differentials, and racial discrimination in the labor market

Jim Stanford (Ph.D., 1996) - Dissertation: Social structures, labor costs, and North American economic integration

Heather Boushey (Ph.D., 1998) - Dissertation: The Social Structures of Insulation Theory and Evidence on the Relationship Between Unemployment, Wages, Discrimination, and Social Policy

Mariana Mazzucato (Ph.D., 1999) - Dissertation: Four Essays on Evolutionary Market Share Dynamics: A Computational Approach

Salimullah Khan (Ph.D., 2000) - Dissertation: Theories of Central Banking in England, 1793-1877

Stephanie Kelton (Ph.D., 2001) - Dissertation: Public Policy and government finance: A comparative analysis under different monetary systems

Nelson Barbosa (Ph.D., 2001) - Dissertation: Essays on structuralist macroeconomics

Rania Antonopoulou (Ph.D., 2005) - Dissertation: An alternative theory of real exchange rate determination for the Greek economy

Isabella Weber (Ph.D., 2019) - Dissertation: Essays on Theories of Money and International Trade