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Roy - I am trying to figure out from your interesting reply exactly what the answer is to
my question.  Is it 1) that the HET faculty at Duke are very involved in things (teaching,
inter-disciplinary work) that take their time away from supervising dissertations and that
also might veer the students too far away from mainstream economics?; and/or that 2) the
HET faculty feel that their own and the department's grant success (and rank and
reputation generally) may be hurt by being perceived as too "touchy-feely," i.e. not
technical, formal enough?
 
Regarding your last paragraph, note that I only asked why the Duke department disallowed
dissertations in the HET, not why they didn't allow approaches critical of the mainstream
or problems to be approached from alternative paradigms.  Is the HET itself by its very
nature critical of the mainstream and/or too open to alternative  erspectives? Or is it
just that the kind of HET done at Duke is "non-mainstream HET" so it would clash too much
with the rest of the program?
 
Thanks for your replies. I have ordered the HOPE special issue you mentioned to try to see
if some of this is explained there.
 
Best, 
 
Mat Forstater 
 
 
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