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Robert Leeson wrote: 
 
>I agree with Robert Whaples:  those in history departments are typically 
>frightened of economists and avoid economic theory; the history of economic 
>thought would not thrive in such an environment. 
 
Good heavens, you two.  I suppose if you are going to say that 
historians are "frightened" of economics, I would have to 
respond that economists are "arrogant" about everyone else. 
 
But that would not get us very far, would it? 
 
I would say the biggest problem is that neither is willing to 
accept that the other knows something useful.  What frustrates 
me is the number of economists who tramp around the historical 
literature looking for "examples" for their "laboratories", 
with no thought as to historiographical context -- and, 
conversely, the number of historians who unthinkingly rely on 
nineteenth-century conceptualizations of economics because 
they are so prejudiced against twentieth-century writing. 
 
Those of us who can read both literatures must create zones where 
border crossing is RESPECTED, because the act of translating from 
one to the other is absolutely necessary today. 
 
If you know me then you already know my prime examples: 
 
By economists:  McCloskey, "Second Thoughts" 
                Greg Clark, "Factory Discipline," Journal of 
                     Economic History, Spring 1994 
 
By historians:  Christopher Clarke's book on rural Mass. and 
                     the "rise of capitalism" 
                Michael O'Malley, "Specie and Species:  Race and 
                     the Money Question in Nineteenth-Century 
                     America," American HIstorical Review 4/94 
                     (this is a beaut) 
 
These are quick examples. 
 
In the case of the economists, they omitted any notion at all 
that the historiography counted.  In the case of the historians, 
they didn't have to look at economists' work, not even the 
easy stuff on coinage or the history of banking.  It is a total 
lack of respect for SCHOLARSHIP.  Each has their own rationale 
for roping off the scholarship of the other discipline. 
 
The Greg Clark thing is a wonder unto itself -- since no one at 
the JEH required him to use footnotes, he just made things up! 
There's a remarkable diagram in there that is fundamentally 
based upon labor theory of value (Marx -- except Clark asserts 
that ownership of property is irrelevant), but LABELED as if 
it were marginal analysis (the lines are labeled MC, MP, etc.) 
As labeled, the diagram is senseless.  But not only did no 
reviewers notice -- THEY DIDN'T CARE!!!!  Caveat emptor, 
reader beware. 
 
One economic historian using this article in his economic 
history class at a state university said (I am not kidding) 
"what is the labor theory of value?  how can you tell?" 
 
And on econhist (those who were there would remember) I was 
told flat out that it DIDN'T MATTER if someone wanted to 
mix and match labor theory of value and the strong model of 
revealed preference and information economics.  Take a phrase 
from here, a definition from there, a mathematical model from 
this place, a diagram from somewhere else. 
 
And in McCloskey's "Second Thoughts", history problems are quickly 
and easily solved bim bam boom by an economist with the "right" 
type of analysis who just walks in and figures it all out.  No 
need to reference the historiography -- and heaven forbid one 
should have to deal with internal contradictions.  Just assume 
them away! 
 
There EXISTS sophisticated and thoughtful literature in history 
that should be useful to economists, and there exists thoughtful 
and sophisticated literature in economics that should be useful 
to historians. 
 
More to the point -- if economists cannot explain historical 
trends in all their complexity, diversity, richness -- than can 
we trust the conclusions drawn for policy today?  And if 
historians continue to interpret economic events in such a way 
as to drag back nineteenth-century assumptions of the way the 
world worsk, what can we say of the resulting interpretations? 
 
In history, I have seen the words "consumption" and "consumer" 
used unthinkingly in five different ways without the author 
being at all aware of the different connotations. 
 
And in economics, I see historical writings taken at face value, 
completely out of context, because they "fit" the author's 
preconceived notions of how things should work. 
 
If you take the BREADTH of economics, particularly in applied 
micro, and the BREADTH of the local studies in history and also 
the COMPLEXITY of intellectual and diversity studies -- you will 
find that each problem comes with its own particular intricacies 
that demand a model with a particular type of attributes -- instead 
of cramming everything into a one-size-fits-all analysis (whether 
narrowly "neoclassical" or stridently "un-neoclassical"), the 
promise of the cutting edge research in both econ and history is 
to ACCEPT the complexity. 
 
This requires admitting what you do and don't know.  And 
finding ways to communicate the language of one type of 
scholarship to the scholars in another area.  (And economists 
are going to have to learn that this is as true WITHIN economics 
-- that is, the inTRAdisciplinary barriers are as high as it 
has long been known to be between economists and outsiders.) 
 
Finally (I did NOT set out to write this much, sorry) -- 
We need places where it is VALUED to teach historians about 
current economic literature,  and teach economists about what 
we have learned from history (I think the first thing economists 
need to learn is to be more self-aware of the use of language 
and the power of cultural symbolism). 
 
Including the history of economic thought as a varient of 
intellectual history -- and as a way to train the minds of 
young economists to be more skeptical of the au courant theory 
of the day. 
 
Oh, having written this much -- one more thing: 
 
We (those outside economics) need economists to find terms for 
the different SCHOOLS of economics within so-called "neoclassical" 
economics.  Historians have no idea that there are differences at 
all.  And the economists who talk to them usually tend to reinforce 
that error by calling everyone who disagrees with them "wrong", 
"obviously wrong", or just plain "stupid". 
 
Now talk among yourselves again. <g> 
 
Mary Schweitzer, Dept. of History, Villanova University 
(on leave 1995-97) <[log in to unmask]> 
 
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