One could define the history of economics as the endeavors by 
students of modern economics to identify and document relationships 
among the key concepts in their field to the concepts that past 
writers have developed. From this point of view, Rowley was doing 
history of economic thought in making the claim that Landa's ideas 
were related to those of Grief. To the extent that either Rowley or 
Grief claims to be a bona fide historian of economics, his (their) 
work warrants evaluation by "our profession."

The concept of trust and trustworthiness has a long history in the 
economics of exchange. However, the cultural and dialect aspects of 
trust and trustworthiness in the theory of inter-regional trade were, 
to my knowledge, new concepts. My recollection of Landa's work is 
that she recognized these aspects before Grief began writing about 
them. However, Grief compared trade growth by means of 
culturally-based trustworthiness with trade growth by means of formal 
law, concluding that the latter was more sustainable and thus more 
relevant to economics. He thus explored a relationship between law 
and inter-regional trade that, to my knowledge, was unprecedented. 
Rowley's remarks, written in Public Choice, are only marginally 
relevant to this relationship.

It is common for many list members to gloss over the distinction 
between economics as a science and economics as a profession. In 
interpreting what others write, I find it useful to keep these things 
separate and ordinarily write from the former perspective.

 From the latter perspective, however, the issue of citations seems 
to me to be a battle over turf. A sociologist of the economics 
profession would not be surprised to find  that Rowley promotes Landa 
since both are associated with the Virginia political economy school.

Pat Gunning