Economics departments were usually in the prestigious faculties of arts and sciences, while finance was often seen as an appropriate topic for universities' vocationally oriented business schools, which were gaining academic status only slowly. The older descriptive, institutional, "unscientific" approach taken in those business schools to the study of finance may have left its mark on economists' attitudes. The economist Stephen Ross, who began research in finance while an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania at the start of the 1970s, recalls being warned that "finance is to economics as osteopathy is to medicine" (Ross interview).

Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, loc. 319