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"Colander, David" <[log in to unmask]>
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Sat, 21 Feb 2009 20:11:26 -0500
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I have now sent in all the quotations for the AEA 
calendar. Many thanks for all your help. You 
showed the benefit of the enormous collective 
wisdom that exists on this list serve.

The calendar will be out in September or October 
and I believe that it will be distributed to all 
AEA members--so maybe they will get a little 
sense of the history of economic thought.


One last question

I'd like to use a quotation I found for Ricardo, 
but I haven't been able to find the source. The quotation is

"Neither a state nor a bank ever have had 
unrestricted power of issuing paper money without 
abusing that power." David Ricardo

Does anyone know its source?


One other issue:

I made a pitch at the last AEA Executive 
Committee Meeting for the AEA to publish 
literature reviews similar to the old Irwin 
Series. It was shot down very quickly. There is 
not much support for history in the Executive 
Committee of the AEA. But I think it would be a 
good idea.  I think the HES should consider 
organizing something along these lines. There is 
a strong need for it in the profession.

Subject: Proposal for AEA to establish a series 
of literature guides to the various fields of study in economics.

         In graduate courses today, students are 
quickly pulled into modern debates and 
literature. This is great, but, too often, the 
students don't have the background knowledge to 
put the modern debates in context, and hence are 
unable to reflect on the larger picture. Having a 
knowledge of how the field reached the current 
cutting-edge debates is useful both in guiding 
student’s research, and in giving them ideas for 
possible alternative ways of approaching issues. 
Thus, I propose that the AEA establish a series 
of field-specific literature guides, similar to 
the old Irwin Series back in the 1950s. These 
guides would include two elements:

    * A published overview article or collection 
of articles (which could be combined together in 
a book) that would provide a broad overview of the literature of the field.
    * A set of on-line links to the articles to 
make accessing them easier for students.

I would suggest starting with one or two fields 
and then expanding as you find competent people 
willing to do it. Eventually, I would hope that 
the series would include all the field studies 
(labor, public finance, macro, etc).

         I see the overviews as being broad 
based, and including older classic articles as 
well as some more recent ones. (You could check 
the Irwin series to see what was covered there, 
and I would assume that many of the collections 
would take those Irwin series as a stepping off 
point.) These collections would differ from the 
handbooks in fields in that they would include 
older literature as well as recent, and they 
would be broader in scope than the typical JEL 
review article. The hope would be that students, 
and other interested economists, studying a 
particular field, could use these articles or 
books as a guide to their study of the past 
literature. (Fewer and fewer graduate professors 
are providing such readings on their syllabus. 
Whereas back in the 60s and 70s one often got a 
40 or 50 page reading list in an course, which 
you were expected to read and know for your field 
examinations, today that is far less common.)

         I think it important that the articles 
be broad overview articles and that they include 
specific lists of articles that a student in a 
field should have read. Including too much will 
make it almost useless--the student might as well 
do an EconLit or Google Scholar search. Perhaps 
one could have a star rating system--3 stars is 
literature that everyone should know (20 or 30 
articles and selections from books); 2 stars is 
literature that specialists in the field should 
know (80-100 articles and books); and 1 star is 
literature that students should be aware of (another 100 articles).

         The overview essay could be actually 
published in the JEL or in the relevant new field 
journals if they are interested. (In online 
discussion of this idea, Olivier Blanchard 
emailed that he liked the idea and thought it 
could be combined with the field journals.) That 
would give the chosen editors an added incentive 
to do it. There could also possible be a session 
at the AEA meetings of "alternative editors" 
views. By that I mean that other top scholars 
could comment on the choices of the editors and 
give some other choices. That overview essay, and 
comments on that overview essay with alternative 
suggestions, would make a nice book that would be 
similar to the Irwin Series (except that it would 
not include the articles­just links). There would 
be no problem getting a top university publisher 
to put it out as a hard copy book at a low price. 
(Princeton University expressed strong interest 
in the idea.) (The price would be negotiated in 
with the deal, but I'm thinking no more than $20 in paperback.)

         To implement the idea, I would also 
suggest that there be an overall editor or 
editorial board appointed by the AEA to oversee 
it, and that that editorial board possibly 
include some individuals suggested by the History 
of Economics Society (or some similar group) so 
that some older literature (i.e.-not just the 
last 10-30 years of literature) is included. From 
my interviews with grad students I sense that 
profession is losing its connection with the 
past, and that the students would like a better 
sense of the longer run debates and issues than 
what they get in their field courses. (It 
differed by department and field.) This editorial 
board would appoint the field editors and also 
individuals who would be asked to do essays commenting on the selections.

David Colander

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