history writing

On the difficulty of assembling a chronology and other F....moments in history of economics research

This year, I'm sharing an office with an econometrician on Mondays and with a geographer on Fridays (you don't want to go into the subtleties of the French educational system). We're discussing the content of our research and the strengths and weaknesses in our respective methodologies, and, of course, joking and complaining about the sociology of our communities. Read more

Posted by Beatrice Cherrier at 5:23 am

The challenge of “value-ladeness” for history writing

 

Although the objectivity-Grail Quest has ended with total success decades ago (so economists say), the question of the possibility and consequences of economists' values smuggling into their daily practice still periodically surfaces, and crises make good times for such debates. Yet, not often do we historians too ask how economists' values should be handled in our writing. Read more

Posted by Beatrice Cherrier at 4:06 pm

The use of economists' biography, III.

 

“The aim would not be to unravel a hidden coherent structure of the philosophical, theoretical, political dimensions of his work, but to give a sense of the contingencies that his work was subject to – both in terms of its origins and its receptions. Don’t make up an Arrow that he himself was not aware of.”

Till to me, email conversation on Kenneth Arrow, summer 2012

 

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Posted by Beatrice Cherrier at 8:02 am

The use of economists' biography, II.

Excerpts from "Retrospect and Prospect," the concluding remarks Bob Coats presented at (or maybe wrote after) the History of Economics conference held in 1972 at Bellagio to commemorate and reassess the 1870s "marginal revolution" (full proceedings here).  

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Posted by Beatrice Cherrier at 10:29 am