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[Please forward wherever the featured books may be interesting. --PW]
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KRESS SEMINAR, 7 May 98
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The Kress Seminar in the History of Economic Thought will meet next
Thursday evening, 7 May, 7:40-10:00pm, in Littauer M16 on the Harvard
University campus.
This "New Book Session" will feature the authors of two new books:
Timothy Alborn (Harvard University)
Conceiving Companies: Joint-Stock Politics in Victorian England
London: Routledge, 1998 (April)
Perry Mehrling (Barnard College)
The Money Interest and the Public Interest: American Monetary
Thought, 1920-1970
Harvard Economic Studies No. 162. Harvard University Press, 1997
Each will have a long hour to pitch his project, bark his book,
trumpet his tome, hawk his et cetera. Seriously, each plans for
questions and discussion by the audience; bring your wits, for there
are no assigned discussants or reviewers on the program.
TIMOTHY ALBORN <[log in to unmask]> teaches history at Harvard
University. He has published many papers (several presented here) on
"the other economists": practitioners such as actuaries, bankers, and
editors of _The Economist_.
_Conceiving Companies_ locates the origins of English joint-stock
banks and railways in the political culture of voluntarism and
regionalism that marked the early nineteenth century. Alborn shows
where that culture "forced" promoters of new companies and where, to
the end of the century, they departed from their original political
moorings in order to adjust to new economic and political pressures.
PERRY MEHRLING <[log in to unmask]> teaches economics at Barnard
College, including a "Foundations" course for the undergraduate
economics major which features the work of Smith, Marx, and Keynes!
He presented his work on Allyn Young here a few years ago.
_The Money Interest and the Public Interest_ tells a story of the
role of money in American democracy, a question associated generally
with the Progressive tradition and its legacy, and more particularly
with the institutionalist tradition in American economic thought.
Mehrling tells the story through the ideas and lives of three
prominent institutionalists --Allyn Young, Alvin Hansen, and Edward
Shaw --against the background of revolutionary changes in the monetary
system, in economic ideas, and in styles of economic explanation.
Dinner
Anyone interested in dinner and conversation before the seminar is
invited to gather at the Singha House Thai restaurant (1105 Mass. Ave)
at 6:00. The food is great, matched only by the company. The Singha
House is prepared to handle late additions to a party (to about 6:30
for dinner or 7:00 for appetizer or drink, given our time constraint).
I hope to see you Thursday,
Paul Wendt
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