Oligopolistic producer sovereignty is a long-standing problem in the knowledge industry. 

Gans, J. S., and G. B. Shepherd. 1994. How Are the Mighty Fallen: Rejected Classic Articles by Leading Economists.  Journal of Economic Perspectives, 8(1): 165-179.

Goodwin, C., and R. Leeson, W. Samuels, and V. Tarascio. 1998. Minisymposium on Editing and Refereeing. History of Economics Review 27, Winter: 2.

The Economic Journal was setup to avoid Austro-German-style controversy: Marshall hoped for "an absolutely catholic basis and including every school of economists that is doing genuine work. I trust that those who shall control this journal will insist that all who write in criticism of others shall take the writings of those others in the best possible sense; and in that way all schools may work in amicable together interpreting each other in the fairest and most generous manner” (British Economic Society 1891, 5).    


----- Original Message -----
From: "Rob Tye" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Saturday, 3 May, 2014 10:25:27 PM
Subject: Re: [SHOE] Leeson on Hall and Hart, refereeing

Michael McLure and Gregory Moore write:

>  As a concluding note, we also suggest that, given the proliferation of
HET journals over the last 20 years, the problem of a systematic bias
towards a given intellectual position has been reduced (but definitely not
eliminated).......If an idea is any good, it usually (but not always) gets
air-time somewhere,

It seems an opportune time for me to make my plea.  

In my - obviously biased - judgement, there are good ideas in the article
sketched below.  

But I am at a loss as to where I might get it reviewed in a competent and
unbiased way.

My fear, based upon long prior experience, is that editors and referees
operating close to historical facts are blind to their own ideological bias.
 Editors with a sophisticated competence regarding ideological difficulties
will not have factually competent referees to call on.

For the benefit of economists familiar with only the facts concerning the
last 300 years or so, I perhaps should add that I am attempting below to
raise issues in deep history concerning the relationship between
feudalisation, suppression of market operations, international capital flows
and the rise of the gold standard, which I feel perhaps should not go
unnoticed, even by those involved with, say, the roll out of electric money

Rob Tye, York, UK

Troy Weight, Seigniorage and Bullionism, in England and Islam

Abstract

It is argued that an elegant dual system of weights was instituted by Caliph
‘Abd al-Malik in 699, fixing a bullion dirhem at 64 grains and a coin dirhem
at 60 grains, yielding a 1/16th seigniorage by weight. Further, that this
system was replicated by Offa in Mercia in 792/3, in part for religious
reasons, theoretically creating a troy penny at 32 grains, and a sterling
coin at 30 grains, all to the same, assumed biblical, grain standard. The
consequences of the much later abolition of the seigniorage charge on silver
coin in England, in 1666, driven by bullionist sentiments, are then
recapitulated. It apparently entailed a retreat, over many decades, from the
issue of both silver and copper coins, the hoarding of silver, and the
exporting of silver to the Far East as bullion. Note is then made that the
Abbasid coinage indicates a somewhat similar reduction or abolition of the
seigniorage charge in Islam after c. 825, leading to broadly similar longer
term consequences.  Silver and copper coin again gradually disappeared,
silver was hoarded and exported, notably in that case to Scandinavia. A
third phase of bullionist political hostility towards the use of a dual
metrology is postulated in the Norman English period. In this third case
however, seigniorage was not abolished, but rather disguised, by suppressing
mention of the bullion/troy system, and recalibrating the grain to a tower
standard in official contexts. Thus very old and ongoing confusions
concerning historical weight standards are ultimately explained by a chronic
profound disagreement about the nature of money, and the negative feedback
from the recurrent phases of political conflict arising out of that
disagreement.