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            HISTORY OF ECONOMICS AT U.MASS.-AMHERST 
 
The University of Massachusetts, Amherst, has no formal program in 
the history of economic thought.  However we have a strong 
commitment to teaching that subject as a regular, core part of our 
economics curriculum at both the undergraduate and graduate levels; 
moreover we have a record of regularly offering such courses for 
over twenty years. 
 
The courses we offer are somewhat unusual in two respects.  First, 
they are coordinated with other courses (micro, macro, political 
economy) in terms of content.  That is, our core theory courses 
typically contain significant study of how theoretical propositions 
emerged and changed across time and across different, alternative 
paradigms of economic analysis.  At the same time, our history of 
economic theory courses contain significant, substantial study of 
economic theories as well as how, when, where, and why they emerged, 
evolved, and disappeared across historical time. 
 
The second somewhat unusual quality of our courses in the history of 
economic thought is the extent to which such courses become --at 
least for portions of the curriculum-- courses in comparative 
economic theory.  In other words, stress is placed on teaching how 
economics has always entailed a complex juxtaposition of and contest 
among alternative economic theories: now one, then another, rise to 
preeminence, fade, reappear in new forms, and so on.  Thus classical 
political economy re-emerges as neoclassical or as post-Walrasian or 
as Austrian; Malthusian as a form of Keynesian neo-Malthusianism; 
Ricardo as neo-ricardian; Marxian as neo-Marxian, and so on.  We 
find that students are often better able to integrate studies in the 
history of economic thought with the rest of the economics 
curriculum if the former include a significant portion of such 
comparative economic theory. 
 
In sum, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, assigns an 
important place to courses that study how alternative theories (or 
paradigms) of economics have evolved, contested, and shaped one 
another. 
 
Rick Wolff 
Professor of Economics 
University of Massachusetts at Amherst 
 
[lightly edited by HES assistant editor Paul Wendt] 
 
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