In further response to Daniele Besomi's query about economic history, the following article may be of interest. It brings a new complexion to the "Australian History Wars" - one that was totally unexpected by the historians of economic thought. We do live in interesting times.

John Lodewijks



Economic historians claim win on status

Bernard Lane | September 26, 2007  The Australian Newspaper

A SMALL band of economic historians has kicked up enough fuss to make the Australian Bureau of Statistics rethink their place within a new system for classifying fields of research.
Economic history and the history of economic thought, fields that boast fewer than 100 academics, would stay within the ABS economics category after all, the agency said. 
After an international letter-writing campaign by economic historians, who feared a loss of status, grants and promotion, the ABS abandoned its proposal to transfer these fields to history. 
Even so, economic historians say they have won only a partial victory. "It is better than originally proposed but they have only gone halfway," said Martin Shanahan, co-editor of The Australian Economic History Review and an academic at the University of South Australia. 
The ABS is reworking the 1998 research fields, courses and disciplines system for classifying research. RFCD codes are used by funding agencies such as the Australian Research Council. The new fields of research system, based on the techniques used in scholarly work, is due to take effect next year. Consultation ends in November. 
Glyn Prichard of the ABS said the agency had been "a little" surprised by the discontent among economic historians. 
"I suppose we were concentrating a bit more on some of the bigger areas," said Mr Prichard, director of innovation and technology with the national statistical centre of the ABS. 
In fields such as mathematical and physical sciences there are more and more dramatic, changes. Mr Prichard said the proposals in such sciences generally had been "pretty well received", perhaps owing to better consultation. 
In the ABS first draft, economic history and the history of economic thought were to lose their own four-digit grouping (a four-digit code sits high in the hierarchy and is cited, for example, in ARC grants) and be merged as a single, six-digit code, the history and philosophy of economics, within the broad field of philosophy. 
This week the ARC funded a University of Queensland project on investment risk under the four-digit RFCD code for economic history and history of economic thought. 
The downgrading from a four to a six-digit code, the merger of the two subjects and their alienation from economics within the ABS system roused practitioners already feeling marginal as universities abandon broad economics for a pragmatic focus on business. 
"Economic history has already been weeded out of a lot of universities and we see this (ABS proposal) as almost the last straw," Dr Shanahan said. 
Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand president Simon Ville welcomed the return of the field to economics but said it was broader than a subfield of applied economics, where the ABS now proposed to house it. 
The ABS had defended the move to history by arguing that those doing economic history used the techniques of history. To justify a merger, the ABS said the fields of economic history and history of economic thought represented just 1.2 per cent of public sector research and development in economics.