Hobson, Veblen and American Institutionalism

Was John A. Hobson an institutionalist? Institutionalism has usually been regarded as peculiarly American. However, Hobson shared with the institutionalists an appreciation of the inadequacy of received economic theory to describe an industrial society. More importantly, many of his own analyses were similar to those of American institutionalists. We here attempt to answer our question by looking for a common core in the analyses of both. In doing so we focus upon a comparison of Hobson and Thorstein Veblen, who was a contemporary of Hobson’s and who first articulated many of the basic propositions of institutionalism.1