Clarence Edwin Ayres (1891-1972)
Clarence Edwin Ayres was born in Lowell, Massachusetts on 6 May 1891. He
received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago in 1917. He
taught at the University of Chicago for three years before moving on to Amherst
College and Reed College, and then he joined the Department of Economics at the
University of Texas in 1930. He retired in 1968 and died in Alamogordo, New
Mexico, on 24 July 1972.
He went to Chicago to study the pragmatic approach to values and social systems,
and economic theory of institutionalism which Thorstein Veblen had founded there.
A staunch advocate of John Dewey's philosophy, Ayres developed his own powerful
critique of unrestrained capitalism. As a leading member of the Texas school of
institutionalism, Ayres was one of the most prominent economists of his
generation.
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