Economics' Past and Present: Historical Analysis and Current Practice

The place for the teaching of and research dealing with the history of economics continues to draw attention, at least from within our speciality. Recent examples are the History of Political Economy mini-symposium (1992) that was anchored to Margaret Schabas's paper and Donald Walker's affirming essay in the Journal of the History of Economic Thought (1999). The former asked whether the history of economics, given the neglect shown by mainstream economics, should be incorporated into history of science programs. The latter argued that this neglect is unfortunate because there is a place for the history of economics in the training of economists. (The neglect is documented by Aslanbegui and Naples (1997).) An important feature of Walker's essay is that the argument was based on structural aspects of the discipline. His point of departure was Donald Gordon's (1965) claim that there is little in the history of economic analysis that facilitates the understanding of current economics and the research problems with which it is concerned. Certainly the education of natural scientists, as Gordon noted, is consistent with this claim. George Stigler (1969) made a similar claim, and both more or less took the conclusion to be self-evident. Walker's response was that, at least among a variety of important sub-disciplines, there is not professional consensus and, therefore, there may not be a sharp distinction between current and past theory. This suggests that some form of historical analysis may be useful. Walker's paper moved the discussion away from arguments that begin with the presumption that every educated economist should be versed in the origins of economics. Instead, he focused on questions relating to history as a tool for understanding and for doing today's economics. In this respect, Walker returned to an issue addressed by Filippo Cesarano (1983)—they both focused on historical studies as a source of illumination for current economic analysis.