The Enduring Significance of Robbins‪.‬

In his comprehensive The Growth of Economic Thought, Henry William Spiegel identifies (1991, p. 536) Carl Menger's methodological studies as "the beginning of a period in which economic theory was largely identified with microeconomics." Spiegel goes on to claim that Lionel Robbins's An Essay On The Nature And Significance of Economic Science (1932) closed the period. The roots of Robbins's definition of economics as (1932, p. 15) "the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses" Spiegel finds (1991, p. 528) in Philip Wicksteed's view that efficient resource administration is the goal of economics, while the laws it develops are applicable to all choice situations. Spiegel places Robbins's Essay at the end of the heyday of microeconomic theory because (1991, pp. 536-37) what he terms "modern economics" took another direction with the advent of Keynesianism. The rise of macroeconomics in the 1930s led to the widespread abandonment of the methodological individualism of microeconomic theorizing in favor of aggregative analysis. This also led to the replacement of cause-and-effect analysis with mutual interdependence and mathematical model-building. Further, Spiegel goes on to argue that Robbins expanded the scope of methodologically individualistic theorizing beyond the conventional borders of microeconomics. Ludwig von Mises's Human Action then continued this expansion; and, Spiegel (1991, p. 543) concludes, "the unyielding tenacity with which Mises adhered to his views place him in an extreme position, remote from the mainstream of economic thought and considered utopian by many of his contemporaries."