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Ross:
Could you explain how you would be better placed as an economic historian
rather than an economist to illuminate contemporary policy issues and
analytical developments. The fourth dimension is the fourth wheel of the
economists' chariot; its absence explains why the formalist revolution
tends to become bogged in algebraic showmanship and statistical
manipulations of dubious validity. Statistics was elevated above history
as the primary source of empirical data (Stigler 1962); this created a
profession obsessed with regression races, but ignorant of what Keynes,
Friedman, Yule etc. had cautioned about such activities. The linkages
between economics and history departments seem to be very slight; many
economists tend to regard such subjects as 'waffle', lacking in rigour. My
"subversive function" could not be performed by historians, only by
economists.
Robert Leeson
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