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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