Katharine Coman: America’s First Woman Institutional Economist and a Champion of Education for Citizenship

Who was the only woman among the American Economic Association founders in September 1885? 'Who, in the early 1890s, became the first American woman professor of statistics? 'Who authored, in 1905, the first major industrial history of the United States and, in 1912, a classic study of settlement of the Far West? 'Who wrote the first article in the American Economic Review when the journal was started in 1911? The answer: America's first woman institutional economist, Katharine Ellis Coman (1857-1915), not yet 28 years old at the AEA's founding but already full professor of history and economics at Wellesley College, possessed of philosophic mind, a champion of education for citizenship, active in labor and other social reform movements, and an exemplar for women's cultural advancement. Recalling her student years at the University of Michigan, when women were a tiny minority, she avowed, "We knew that we were ranked by our achievements and became fully convinced of the necessity for sincere and honest work" (1903, 362). This article focuses on one highlight of Coman's far-reaching career: she was foremost an industrial historian, a pace-setter in asking the most relevant questions about industrial history and the processes of institutional change. Working in a profession then dominated almost exclusively by men, she became an admirable role model for all institutional economists and especially for the women who have followed her lead. Coman provided a continuingly relevant approach for institutional economists who work on problems of public policy, an approach too often neglected that needs to be revisited.