The Journal of Law and Economics was the house organ for the neoliberal law and economics movement. The most important use of the arsenal of “measurement” techniques was not necessarily to persuade anyone of anything—but instead to redirect state policy. No longer would regulation be conceived as inevitably bad or inefficacious, but instead as improvable; econometric method was to be deployed not merely for convincing fellow economists, but for effecting this improvement. Through these newly developed neoliberal techniques of auditing, with the promise of more to come, Stigler sought to impose the views of an economic elite on the social sciences, and ultimately regulators.

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 155