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Petur Jonsson's opinions are interesting, though I am bothered 
by his ability to neglect much of what was said last fall and 
his rush to characterize people's aims in his own convenient, 
but inaccurate, reconstruction. If people think that thicker 
history is anything like what Jonsson makes it out to be, I 
doubt that they would be interested in it. 
 
What most needs to be addressed is Jonsson's thinly veiled sneer 
in his assertion that those who advocate doing thicker history don't know 
what they want to achieve with their work. In Jonsson's re-writing 
of the discussions from last fall, the advocates of thicker history 
are, at best, antiquarians who do "history for history's sake" and don't 
reflect 
seriously about making "better economic theories" or "doing economics 
better". 
 
This position may be accurate for some advocates of doing thick 
history, but I don't know who they are. I wrote extensively last 
fall about the need to do good history as a means of showing economists 
that historical thinking has value in understanding how economic theory 
changes and it is used by others. I won't repeat again what I said, 
but I believe that doing thicker, richer histories of the discipline 
are an integral part of helping to make a better economics. To take 
Jonsson's own example, I would think that a history of monetarism 
that looked at the inflation of the 1970's, the political position 
of the central banks that adopted monetarist targetting, the public 
perception of Keynesianism's failure, the instability of velocity 
in the 1980's (worldwide), the subsequent abandonment of monetarism, 
and the many self-contortions of monetarists in the face of empirical 
evidence that subverted their positions would be a much more useful 
history for professional economists than a rehashing of who thought 
that the IS-LM apparatus should or shouldn't be jettisoned. The kind 
of history I would like to see written would help economists to think more 
clearly about who uses their theories and why. And why their ideas, 
even the ones that economists are sure have all the relevant truths 
embodied 
in them, can turn out to be of little practical value. 
 
Jonsson can sneer all he wants about historical arguments that try to 
relate economic theory to women's hair fashions, but when he talks this way 
he has to understand that he's risking that no one he wants to speak with 
will take him seriously. Why should they? He doesn't understand or talk 
about their work seriously, so why try to talk with him? He certainly 
hasn't characterized my beliefs or opinions accurately. 
 
There is much more that could said about Jonsson's essay, but this will 
have to do as a quick effort to address his misrepresentations and his 
unfortunate sneer. 
 
Brad Bateman 
Grinnell College 
 
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