Last week the 2007 North American Summer Meetings of The Econometric
Society were held at Duke University. As noted in an earlier post to
this list, we offered to organize a session on the "History of
Econometrics", an offer that was accepted. The session's program was:

"Session 84: History of Econometrics

Session Chair: Kevin Hoover, Duke University
1. The Problem of Passive Observation
Presented by: Marcel Boumans, University of Amsterdam
2. Ragnar Frisch's conception of econometrics
Presented by: Olav Bjerkholt, University of Oslo and 
Ariane Dupont-Kieffer, Inrets (Paris)
3. The Econometricians' Statistician
Presented by: John Aldrich, University of Southampton
4. How Can an Econometrician Become Immortal?
Presented by: E. Roy Weintraub, Duke University"


The session played to a full house, and was well-received. This leads
to an observation/suggestion. Given the fact that HET-ers
want to be heard and positively regarded by the mainstream economics profession,
one way to do this is to meet on "their" turf as it were. 
The annual HES sponsored sessions at the ASSA are one established venue. 
We intend to follow up in the future with the Econometric Society. 
But there are lots of such venues. Meetings of health economists, 
meetings of regional associations, meetings of agricultural economists, 
financial economists etc. This requires only individual initiative
in forming sessions and submitting those sessions to the organizing/program committees.


HES might well consider whether it can develop a mechanism to systematically
encourage such sessions.  As with many endeavors, the reward goes to those who
follow through, so this is more likely to succeed if it is someone's job. And
it presents another instance in which professional staff support might be
helpful in lending continuity to HES's efforts (a matter that came up at the
business meeting at George Mason two weeks ago.)

But whether or not HES becomes involved, this path is low cost and high return
in visibility for good work in the history of economics.

Kevin D. Hoover
E. Roy Weintraub