A call to arms for Historians and Economists...

The Marshall Lectures often provide thought provoking talks and one talk in particular spoke to me looking at the relationship between history and economics: The speaker is a well known historian and he said exactly the right thing: Read more

Posted by Benjamin Mitra-Kahn at 10:29 am

Disaggregate, disaggregate!

Last June at a History of Social Science workshop , David Engerman presented a paper on the Harvard's Refugee Interview Project (1950-1954). He told the subtle story of a project which was set up by some sociologist and anthropologists with no specific soviet studies background, which was funded by Air Force officials whose academic background entrusted them with intellectual agenda different from the broader -and changing- concerns of their army. He did not only document the tensions between academic freedom and war needs for intelligence, but he also touched upon the consequences of very concrete hurdles (difficulty to interview Russian refugees in Germany because of clearance issues) and details the unintended offsprings of this failed project (the training of a set of graduate students who later became true sovietologists). Read more

Posted by Beatrice Cherrier at 6:57 pm

Warren J. Samuels (1933-2011)

On this blog, we like to overstate quite a bit our irreverence towards the establishment and in particular our senior colleagues. Several posts have been written in which we have challenged the prevaling views and methodologies in HET and criticized the way young scholars are sometimes treated with some condescension by more established peers. Yet there is no denying that we are also the products of this establishment that we sometimes take to task. One instance of this relation is that most of the contributors of this blog - if not all of them - have received the Warren J. and Sylvia J. Samuels Young Scholars Award, which allowed us to participate in the HES meeting without having to pay for it - at a time where most of us were graduate or post-graduate students with only meagre stipends. Therefore, it is with great sadness that we have learnt of the death of Warren J. Samuels on August 17. Read more

Posted by Yann Giraud at 5:31 pm

The long - and tedious - road to rankings

To celebrate its 100 years of publishing, the AER published a special issues, whose retrospective part consisted of a list of the 20 most important articles, assembled by a committee which included Kenneth J. Arrow, B. Douglas Bernheim, Martin S. Feldstein, Daniel L. McFadden, James M. Poterba, and Robert M. Solow, and an essay on the history of the AER by Robert A. Margo. Read more

Posted by Beatrice Cherrier at 5:48 pm

Of the difference between the historian and the filmmaker

Months ago, I got a message from a friend that was a swift and excited line: Errol Morris was writing a series of posts about science, even more remarkable about Thomas Kuhn. Morris is the director of two of the best documentaries I have seen: The Thin Blue Line and The Fog of War. The second is a masterpiece (textbook?) of documentary through oral history. Morris interviews Robert Strange McNamara, and in the latter's voice and memories alone, tells us the story of foreign policy from the Second World War to the 1970s. Morris is the most empathic and subtle of all documentarists. Read more

Posted by Tiago Mata at 9:44 pm

Economics and Politics

Economics and politics go hand in hand, we all know that. Just look at the recent fight over the debt ceiling in the U.S. At the same time, we teach our students economics as if it is a set of ideas that exists and may be rejected and improved without recourse to political ideas. Even Paul Krugman’s block buster textbook International Economics is completely devoid of any political references. Why is that?

The easy, right-wing answer may be some version of the story that left-wing economics is constructed as a-political to enhance its authority in the political arena. Such a story contains a grain of truth but is also both too simple and too narrow. Read more

Posted by Floris Heukelom at 5:06 am

Who does original research?

INET is all about thinking new things, and indeed academia is supposed to inspire great thoughts. So why are there so little original research in economics? I don't mean in total, but think of it as a percentage of the total output. The truly great research is pretty thin on the ground if you think of it that way, and in fact, even the mildly interesting is pretty thin. All this introspection was brought on by reading Richard Hammings talk "You and your research" (given some 25 years ago) - where he asks us to do Great research. 'Us' are the social scientists, scientists or all researchers out there. It is not clear to me that we economists follow his advice at many stages of our careers. Read more

Posted by Benjamin Mitra-Kahn at 1:04 pm

Paul Samuelson, Women and the History of Economics (Part 2)

As part of the tremendous promotion campaign for the 8th edition of his textbook Economics, Samuelson was devoted a feature in the New York Times (February 5, 1970, p. 41). In the article, Samuelson was quoted for saying that “the girls at Sweet Briar” would not be able to treat some of the most difficult chapter-ending questions, while “honor students at Princeton” would. This remark did not go unnoticed. Many female Professors, mostly teachers in Women's colleges, wrote letters of protests. None of the latter failed to mention that they had used several of the first seven editions as former students or current instructors.  

The interesting question is not to know whether Samuelson was male-chauvinistic here. None of the complaining Professors thought it this way, indeed. However, there are many more interesting issues to be addressed. Read more

Posted by Yann Giraud at 6:06 am

Paul Samuelson, Women and the History of Economics (Part 1)

Paul Samuelson was notorious for many things, but also, like Marshall, for spending most of his academic life in the same institution. However, there were at least three occasions when others tried to have him leave MIT. Tjalling Koopmans, in 1947, tried to convince him to join the Cowles Commission at Chicago and two years later, it was Ted Schultz who begged him to join Chicago's economics department. Of course, we all know Paul Samuelson rejected these offers and stayed in his home institution. The first time, he mentionned that his decision had been taken after discussing the matter carefully with his wife Marion. 

Similarly, in 1957, Samuelson was approached by Gregg Lewis who wanted to know whether MIT would be interested in hiring Gary Becker. According to Lewis, Becker's decision to leave Chicago was that his wife wanted to be closer to her family on the East Coast.  Read more

Posted by Yann Giraud at 5:28 am

When the US last defaulted...

Two things seem to be taken for granted in the current debt-ceiling debate: 1. The parties will come to an agreement on the debt ceiling because 2. These United States have never defaulted and will not start now. Well, Lexington has eight pretty good reasons why an agreement is not inevitable and as far as I can tell, the United States has defaulted in the past, and we need to recognize that fact... The historical trick revolves around 'these united states' because these 50 States are somewhat recent. Hawaii and Alaska would finalize statehood in '59. but various make-ups of the USA have indeed defaulted or re-structured its debt. Read more

Posted by Benjamin Mitra-Kahn at 2:35 pm