The Economic Review was launched in 1891, the same year as the rival Economic Journal. It was the brain child of a group of concerned Oxford historians and social scientists, most of them with a strong social conscience, who were more interested in discussing economic ideas in the context of moral and social problems, than in following the Cambridge approach of advancing the status of economics as a science. The Economic Review was the voice of relatively young dons interested particularly in "the condition of the labourers" and was intended for "the increasing number of people...feeling the burden of responsibility in regard to the stress of existing problems". Unlike their Cambridge counterparts, concerned with advancing the status of economics as a science, the Review became an important vehicle for the so-called "historical economists" and also for the growing disciplines of economic history and sociology in Britain.

Amongst the contributors are such distinguished names as Hobson, Cannan, Tawney, Hobhouse, Ashley and Sidney Webb.
Although the Cambridge approach to economics proved triumphant, the Economic Review remains an invaluable document of the Oxford position. Present controversies about economic ideas in the context of moral and social problems, and the uses of economic theory in general, make the Economic Review an indispensable source for social and economic historians which has obvious contemporary relevance.