DORFMAN, JOSEPH

DORFMAN, JOSEPH (1904–1991), U.S. economist. Born in Russia and educated in the United States, Dorfman worked with the National Industrial Conference Board and joined the faculty at Columbia University in 1931. Economic methodology and history of economic thought were his main fields of study. His major publications included a five-volume work, The Economic Mind in American Civilization (1946–59); other studies deal with the economics of the Jacksonian era and the thought of Thorstein Veblen, the American social scientist. He also wrote Thorstein Veblen and His America (1934); Early American Policy: Six Columbia Contributors (1960); and Institutional Economics: Veblen, Commons, and Mitchell Reconsidered (1963). Dorfman was a distinguished fellow of the History of Economics Society. In 1990 the HES established an annual prize for the best dissertation in the history of economic thought. In 1992 the Dorfman family endowed a permanent fund for the award, which is now called the Joseph Dorfman Best Dissertation Award. (Joachim O. Ronall / Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)