John Rogers Commons (1862–1945) was a well-known institutional economist at the University of Wisconsin. 1862 was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... 1945 (MCMXLV) was a common year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1945 calendar). ... Institutional economics is a school of heterodox economics, with a focus going beyond economics usual concentration on markets to the exclusion of all else. ... The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public university located in Madison, Wisconsin. ...

Born in Hollansburg, Ohio, Commons had a religious upbringing which led him to be an advocate for social justice early in life. Commons believed that carefully crafted legislation could enact social change; this view led him to be known as a conservative radical and an incrementalist. Hollansburg is a village located in Darke County, Ohio. ...

Commons is best known for developing an analysis of collective action by the state and other institutions, which he saw as essential to understanding economic dynamics. In this analysis he continued the strong American tradition in institutional economics by such figures as the economist and social theorist Thorstein Veblen. This institutional theory was closely related to his remarkable successes in fact-finding and drafting legislation on a wide range of social issues for the State of Wisconsin. He drafted legislation establishing Wisconsin's worker's compensation program, which became the first such program in the United States. A state is an organized political community, occupying a territory, and possessing internal and external sovereignty, that enforces a monopoly on the use of force. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Social organisation. ... Norwegian-American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen Thorstein Bunde Veblen (July 30, 1857 – August 3, 1929) was a Norwegian-American economist and sociologist. ... Official language(s) None Capital Madison Largest city Milwaukee Area  Ranked 23rd  - Total 65,498 sq. ...

In 1934 he published Institutional Economics which lay out his view that institutions were made up of collective actions that, along with conflict of interests, defined the economy. In Commons view, Institutional Economics was the addition of collective control of individual transactions to existing economic theory.

Several of his colleagues (such as Arthur J. Altmeyer) went on to create the social security program in the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. Commons was a contributor to The Pittsburgh Survey, an unprecedented 1907 sociological investigation of a single American city. His graduate student, John A. Fitch, wrote The Steel Workers, of the key texts resulting from the Survey. Arthur J. Altmeyer was born in DePere, Wisconsin May 8, 1891. ... Social Security in the United States is a social insurance program funded through a dedicated payroll tax. ... FDR redirects here. ... The Pittsburgh Survey (1907-1908) was a pioneering sociological study of the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania funded by the Russell Sage Foundation of New York. ... John Andrews Fitch (1881–1959) was a writer, teacher, and pioneering social investigator of the Progressive Era. ...

Commons also undertook a major study of the history of American labor. His practical work has been remembered just as much as his theory of institutional economics.

Quotes

• "...An institution is collective action in control, liberation and expansion of individual action."
• "...But the smallest unit of the institutional economists is a unit of activity -- a transaction, with its participants. Transactions intervene between the labor of the classic economists and the pleasures of the hedonic economists, simply because it is society that controls access to the forces of nature, and transactions are, not the "exchange of commodities," but the alienation and acquisition, between individuals, of the rights of property and liberty created by society, which must therefore be negotiated between the parties concerned before labor can produce, or consumers can consume, or commodities be physically exchanged..."

--"Institutional Economics" American Economic Review, vol. 21 (1931), pp.648-657.

References

• brief biography
• Jack Barbash, "John R. Commons: pioneer of labor economics" Monthly Labor Review May 1989, Vol. 112, No. 5 scholarly overview.
• Joseph Dorfman, The Economic Mind in America: 1918-1933 (1959), v. 4.
• John R. Commons, Myself (1964), his autobiography.

• online resources and articles