Guest Lecture: David Philippy

Economists in the Household: A Study of American Consumption after 1923

David Philippy is an historian of economics, he is currently Fellow-in-Residence at CY AS, invited by AGORA. He is an associate member at the Walras-Pareto Center (Lausanne).

While today consumption is considered a central subject of economic analysis, the history of its study by economists reveals a puzzling neglect: For much of the discipline’s history, consumption was considered “too commonplace to excite curiosity.” Yet, by the early 20th century, there emerged in the US a field called “the economics of consumption” with the declared objective of building a “proper” theory of consumption. One of the key features of this cohort was that it was essentially composed by female economists and "home economists," whose aim was to “fill the gap” left by male economists. By the 1920s, Chicago economist Hazel Kyrk’s Theory of Consumption (1923) had formed a theoretical epicenter that structured this new field. By investigating the intellectual debates that followed Kyrk’s Theory, this research wishes to contribute to a better understanding of how subjects of study emerge in the history of science and highlight the crucial contribution of women economists at the frontiers of the economics discipline. 

Date: 4th April 2023 from 12:30 to 14:00

The hybrid guest lecture is organised in person at the Auditorium of MIR in Neuville-sur-Oise and remotely on Zoom.

To attend the remote guest lecture, please connect to Zoom: https://cyu-fr.zoom.us/j/96487189480

Meeting ID: 964 8718 9480

The video will be online on the CY AS YouTube channel