Atlas Trail
How Ideas Became Institutions
A path from the schools of economic thought that disputed how economies work to the central banks, trade bodies and research institutions built to act on the answer, from the Methodenstreit to the Bank of Japan's pioneering use of quantitative easing.
Stop 1 of 7.
Schools of Thought
Where economics first argued in public over whether it was a historical discipline or a deductive one, and lost the fight that produced the modern welfare state.
Stop 2 of 7.
Institutions
A central bank that quietly pioneered the monetary tool the world would later credit to the 2008 crisis response.
Stop 3 of 7.
Schools of Thought
A field built by decolonization's own newly independent governments, and the theory that gave them a formal model instead of borrowed assumptions.
Stop 4 of 7.
Institutions
The institution development economics' own critique of free-trade orthodoxy built inside the United Nations itself.
Stop 5 of 7.
Schools of Thought
A school that asked a question growth theory had stopped asking, and pursued it from a desk inside the World Bank.
Stop 6 of 7.
Schools of Thought
A heterodox theory of financial instability that went from marginal to widely quoted within weeks of 2008.
Stop 7 of 7.
Institutions
The private research body whose word on recession dates governs the field despite carrying no legal authority to give it.
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