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My last post on this, promise. 
 
I have just received the HOPE 2002 Supplement, edited by Roy, entitled the Future of the
History of Economics (although Roy was talked out of entitling it "Does the History of
Economics Have any Future?" by Craufurd Goodwin).  For anyone who has not seen it, and is
interested in any of the issues that were raised by this discussion, I recommend taking a
look.  The volume is primarily made up of papers from the 2001 Annual HOPE Conference held
near the Duke campus, although there were two papers included that were solicited after
the onference.  There are chapters on the HES, history of thought at liberal arts
colleges, the journals, reports from Germany, Italy, France and elsewhere, and pieces by
students and 'younger' scholars giving their take on the grad school and job scene.  There
is a section on heterodox traditions, but the orthodox/heterodox issues are discussed
throughout.  As one might expect, the 'history of economics as history of science' is a
recurring theme, and many of the issues raised in this discussion are relected on
throughout. 
 
There is a chapter by two Duke Ph.D. students, Derek S. Brown and Shauna Saunders.  The
two acknowledge that they "enjoy opportunities as graduate students in the history of
economic thought that are not available to similar graduate students at other institutions
because of the stature of our history of thought professors [as well as]...visiting
historians, the HOPE journal, the archives in the Economists' Papers Project"(pp. 298-
299n1).  They note that "[o]ne might not expect to find people concealing a research
interest in the history of economics in a department with a weekly workshop or field exams
in the subject"(p. 300). "As a general rule," they write, "we do not volunteer information
on our historical research projects to faculty or other graduate students until we have a
sense of their sympathy to the field"(p. 300).
 
 
Brown "began studying history of economic thought as an undergraduate with Bradley Bateman
at Grinnel College"; Saunders "was introduced to her first love--the history of economics
--by Margaret Schabas while an undergraduate in Toronto."  Brown "is presently working on
an empirical
dissertation in health economics"; Saunders "dissertation research examines the public and
private funding of the nonprofit arts sector."
 
Roy's final sentence of his introduction reads: 
 
For me, were a single scale of optimist = 10 and pessimist = 0 to represent the possible
perspectives on the future of the subdiscipline of economics called history of economics,
3 would be my upper bound.
 
Thanks for the discussion, 
 
Mat Forstater 
 
 
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