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Robert Whaples' posting raises an issue regarding Roy's editorial that I had 
thought about bringing up, but hadn't had time to address. In his 
editorial Roy said: 
 
"It is not as if the perspective I urge is alien to economists, for it is 
precisely the model that has been established in the subdiscipline of 
economic history.  That is, many economic historians hold joint 
appointments in departments of economics and departments of history. 
Sometimes economic historians have their primary affiliation with 
history departments. Nonetheless, the standards for writing and 
publishing and professional acceptance in the discipline of economic 
history are different from the standards of the subdisciplines of labor 
economics or international trade, or economic demography, or Post 
Keynesian economics." 
 
The comparison of the situation in the history of economics with that in 
economic history is interesting. First, from a recent discussion on 
EH.Teach (including Fred Carstensen, who has contributed to this 
discussion as well) I gather Roy's characterization of history and 
economic history is not quite correct: there has been a mass migration of 
economic historians out of history and into economics departments, 
precisely for some of the reasons that Robert identifies. Thus, the 
"sometimes" 
in Roy's sentence is increasingly less of the time. 
 
Secondly, Robert's characterization of the difference between an economic 
historian's historiographic standards and a historian's standards suggests 
a parallel with the history of economics. Let me see if I can explain what 
I mean: for many years the relevant standard of historical explanation in 
economic history was that adopted by the historian (not to say that there 
was one standard, simply that the standards were established in the 
historical profession -- see Peter Novick's history of the American 
history profession or Michael Bliss' work on Canadian historiography). 
Contemporary economic historians use the standards of both history and 
economics, which challenges the earlier standards of historical 
scholarship. On the history of economics side, for many years the 
historian of economics often viewed him/herself as an economist, and 
success was judged in terms of the economic profession's standards. Roy's 
editorial, and quite a bit of recent work in the profession, challenges 
the earlier standard in the history of economics by suggesting that the 
history of economics should be judged by the standards of history. In both 
sub-disciplines, then, there has been a movement toward standards that 
differ from those traditionally used in the sub-discipline. In economic 
history the resulting migration is from history toward economics. In 
history of economics the migration may be from economics toward history 
of science (or science studies/cultural studies, etc.). 
 
Thirdly, the acceptance by economic historians of the standards of 
economics rather than those commonly adopted by historians suggests a 
alternative "migration" pattern for historians of economics. It may be 
that the economics of science literature could be extended into the study 
of economics sufficiently to suggest economic explanations for the 
history of economics. These explanations would contrast with the type of 
history Roy suggested (depending upon the type of economics employed by 
practioners of the economics of science) but would still constitute 
legitimate explanations within the historical study of the economics 
discipline. 
 
Ross 
 
Ross B. Emmett                Editor, HES and Co-manager CIRLA-L 
Augustana University College 
Camrose, Alberta CANADA   T4V 2R3 
voice: (403) 679-1517   fax: (403) 679-1129 
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URL: http://www.augustana.ab.ca/~emmettr 
 
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