John R. Commons

Commons, John Rogers

John Rogers Commons, 1862–1945, American economist, b. Hollansburg, Ohio, grad. Oberlin, 1888. Influenced by the other social sciences, Commons tried to broaden the scope of economics, especially in his noted Legal Foundations of Capitalism (1924) and Institutional Economics (1934). He was also interested in immediate social problems, ...

Commons, John Rogers

John Rogers Commons, 1862–1945, American economist, b. Hollansburg, Ohio, grad. Oberlin, 1888. Influenced by the other social sciences, Commons tried to broaden the scope of economics, especially in his noted Legal Foundations of Capitalism (1924) and Institutional Economics (1934). He was also interested in immediate social problems, chiefly those dealing with labor, and served on many government commissions. Commons was one of the editors of A Documentary History of American Industrial Society (10 vol., 1910–11) and History of Labor in the United States (4 vol., 1919–35).

See his autobiography, Myself (1934); biography by L. G. Harter (1962).