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HISTORY OF ECONOMICS AT U.MASS.-AMHERST
The University of Massachusetts, Amherst, has no formal program in
the history of economic thought. However we have a strong
commitment to teaching that subject as a regular, core part of our
economics curriculum at both the undergraduate and graduate levels;
moreover we have a record of regularly offering such courses for
over twenty years.
The courses we offer are somewhat unusual in two respects. First,
they are coordinated with other courses (micro, macro, political
economy) in terms of content. That is, our core theory courses
typically contain significant study of how theoretical propositions
emerged and changed across time and across different, alternative
paradigms of economic analysis. At the same time, our history of
economic theory courses contain significant, substantial study of
economic theories as well as how, when, where, and why they emerged,
evolved, and disappeared across historical time.
The second somewhat unusual quality of our courses in the history of
economic thought is the extent to which such courses become --at
least for portions of the curriculum-- courses in comparative
economic theory. In other words, stress is placed on teaching how
economics has always entailed a complex juxtaposition of and contest
among alternative economic theories: now one, then another, rise to
preeminence, fade, reappear in new forms, and so on. Thus classical
political economy re-emerges as neoclassical or as post-Walrasian or
as Austrian; Malthusian as a form of Keynesian neo-Malthusianism;
Ricardo as neo-ricardian; Marxian as neo-Marxian, and so on. We
find that students are often better able to integrate studies in the
history of economic thought with the rest of the economics
curriculum if the former include a significant portion of such
comparative economic theory.
In sum, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, assigns an
important place to courses that study how alternative theories (or
paradigms) of economics have evolved, contested, and shaped one
another.
Rick Wolff
Professor of Economics
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
[lightly edited by HES assistant editor Paul Wendt]
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