The new economists moved away from philosophical abstractions such as freedom of contract to what they regarded as testable economic hypotheses. In the words of historian Herbert Hovenkamp, they believed no one could prove that an economic “right” such as “an employer has right to pay any wage he and his employees agree on” actually existed. They argued for efficiency and believed that statements such as “minimum wage laws provide more efficient use of economic resources” were testable, verifiable, and “more plausible than doctrines like liberty of contract.”
