Edwin E. Witte - Professor at The University of Wisconsin

Professor At The University of Wisconsin

From 1922 to 1933, he served as chief of the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Library, an agency now known as the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau.Joining the faculty at Wisconsin, he worked with Commons, and Selig Perlman, Robert M. La Follette, Sr., Robert M. La Follette, Jr., E. A. Ross, and Arthur J. Altmeyer (who became the chairman of the Social Security Board) who were developing the Wisconsin progressive movement and working on public policy issues of the day. In 1933 Witte was appointed full professor in the economics department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Throughout the 1910s and 1920s, while serving as an administrator, Witte managed to publish consistently. This, coupled with his reputation as an expert on labor economics explain the unusual appointment. Following this appointment, Witte served on the unemployment insurance section of the Wisconsin Industrial Commission.

As a professor of economics, one of his central beliefs (taught in his "Government and Business" courses) was that the economics discipline, because of its focus on markets, deprecated the role of government in regulating, promoting, and protecting the economy. He preferred "political economics" to "economics" as the truer descriptor of his discipline. Also trained by Commons, Witte preferred the institutional economics approach to problems.