Congratulations to Bruce.
Rachel

On 6/18/20, Gary Mongiovi <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Splendid news! Congrats, Bruce. Well deserved!
>
> Gary
>
>
> Gary Mongiovi
> Economics & Finance Department
> St John's University
> Jamaica, NEW YORK 11439 (USA)
>
> Tel: +1 (718) 990-7380
> Email: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> ________________________________
> From: Societies for the History of Economics <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of
> Marianne Johnson <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2020 8:03 AM
> To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: [SHOE] HES Distinguished Fellow Award 2020
>
>
> * External Email *
>
> Dear SHOE list
>
> The History of Economics Society is delighted to announce this year's
> Distinguished Fellow Award goes to Bruce Caldwell.
>
> [cid:5a342063-05d7-4dc7-9680-240312e758d1]  At Adam Smith's grave in
> Canongate Kirkward, Edinburgh
>
> Professor Caldwell received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of
> North Carolina in 1979, working under the guidance of Vincent Tarascio. He
> has held professorships at the University of North Carolina—Greensboro and,
> since 2008, at Duke University, where he serves as Research Professor and
> Director of the Center for the History of Political Economy (CHOPE). He was
> twice the Ludwig M. Lachmann Research Fellow at the London School of
> Economics and is a Life Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge.
>
> Professor Caldwell’s early career began with methodological questions about
> how economics is done.  The impressive analysis in Beyond Positivism (a
> development of his PhD thesis) showed how positivist philosophies of science
> were applied and misapplied in contemporary economics; this was the first
> monograph to challenge the unthinking acceptance of such conventional
> methodologies by economists. The book’s influence was recently marked by a
> 35th anniversary session at the 2017 HES meetings, featuring papers by Wade
> Hands, Kevin Hoover, Tony Lawson,and Peter Boettke, along with a reflective
> response by Professor Caldwell.  There followed, through the 1980s and into
> the early 1990s, some seminal analytical articles on the philosophy of
> science in relation to economics, of which one of the most remarkable might
> be “Clarifying Popper”, an article that was both explanatory and highly
> informative for professional economists (as befits an article in the Journal
> of Economic Literature, 1991), but equally insightful for those fellow
> specialists who thought they already knew their Popper!  His detailed
> analysis brought new understanding of the nuances and real relevance of this
> philosopher of science for economics and for social sciences in general.  At
> this time, Caldwell might be seen as a brilliant member of a small cohort of
> impressive younger scholars working on the philosophy of economics from
> within economics.
>
> In the late 1980s and early 1990s, his scholarship turned to include serious
> historical work, not for its own sake, but as a way to get more deeply under
> the skin of economics as a socially and politically relevant social science.
>  His focus was on Austrian economics, at that time, still regarded as an
> unfashionable strand of economics, but one that was well chosen just because
> of Austrian economists’ long-standing concern with questions of information,
> time, uncertainty and individual rationality - all issues that mainstream
> economics was about to rediscover as the main neoclassical paradigm began to
> move beyond its hard core of post-war theorizing.  This move thus proved
> extremely insightful of him and pivotal for his later career.
>
> Caldwell is now widely acknowledged internationally as the expert on the
> history and philosophy of Austrian economics from its foundation with Carl
> Menger in the late nineteenth century through Hayek’s work and into its
> modern manifestations. Caldwell’s research and analysis show how Austrian
> economics arose in its local context and became one of the main streams of
> economics throughout much of the first half of the twentieth century.  His
> masterful exploration of the interwar debates between Austrians and
> Cambridge economists (explored in his Editor’s “Introduction” to Vol 9 of
> Hayek’s Collected Works) shows both his strong historical grip on the
> material and his persuasive writing: he skillfully explains the intricacies
> of interwar debates about the business cycle, its causes and it
> characteristics, as Keynes and Hayek battled each other while simultaneously
> developing and changing their own theories and approaches.
>
> While some scholars would have focussed their attention narrowly in order to
> get at the essence of this Austrian tradition, Caldwell’s research gaze has
> illuminated for us not only the depths of Austrian economic theory, but has
> enlightened and delighted his readers by explorations that both reveal its
> breadth and show how important it is for the continuing work of professional
> economists.  Through his study of its main twentieth century adherent,
> Hayek, he has found ways to show how economics is naturally bound to
> politics, to philosophy, and to psychology.  Thus, for example, through his
> wonderful Editor’s introduction to Socialism and War (Vol 10 of the
> collected works) and his “Hayek and Socialism” (Journal of Economic
> Literature, 1997), he uses the historical debates about the possibilities of
> planning an economy to analyse the relationships between types of economy
> and types of freedoms, both economic and political.  We come to understand
> the relevance of these debates not as dead historical monuments, but as
> arguments with continuing relevance for the relation of polity and economy.
>
> The work of Hayek had become marginalized by economists in the third quarter
> of the twentieth century, when his work was more narrowly seen as political
> philosophy. But, more recently the problems he considered and his brilliant
> analysis of the market and competition, and of knowledge and liberty, have
> once again become an important resource for economists as well as political
> scientists and philosophers working on these fundamental questions that cut
> across the social sciences. Professor Caldwell’s work has been instrumental
> in bringing these many facets of Hayek work into focus in such ways that
> these different communities can all appreciate the importance of his many
> ideas.  In our judgement, Caldwell’s Hayek’s Collected Works project is not
> just one of editorship, but of re-assembling the pieces of 20th century
> debates in political economy in such ways that do not just retain, but
> create, relevance for our 21st century problems.
>
> Caldwell’s 2004 intellectual biography of Hayek, Hayek’s Challenge, is a
> landmark work, one that situates Hayek’s methodological position and various
> other of his scholarly contribution in their appropriate context in the
> stream of economic thinking. It has set the standard for scholarship on
> Hayek’s broad intellectual efforts and will be the touchstone for work by
> others in this area for decades to come. We are very pleased that Caldwell
> has elected to build on this work by penning a full-scale biography of his
> subject. Hayek was a fascinating figure, regardless of what one thinks of
> his economics and his politics, and his influence in economics, politics and
> popular debates, taken as a whole, dwarfs that of virtually all other
> economists of the twentieth century. In short, Hayek’s larger life is ripe
> for a true biography, and Dr. Caldwell is just the scholar to do it—and do
> it proper justice. Caldwell’s broad-based historiographic approach, which
> draws on close textual analysis, archival sources, oral histories, larger
> social, political and economic contexts, and so forth is exactly what is
> needed to get at the essence of Hayek, and this work promises to add
> immensely to our understanding of this figure who played such an important
> role at the LSE, at the University of Chicago, in affecting Western
> attitudes toward socialism and communism, and in the Reagan-Thatcher
> “revolutions” in the 1980s.
>
> While Caldwell’s scholarly contributions alone merit recognition as a
> Distinguished Fellow of the HES, we consider equally important his efforts
> to support and grow the history of economics field. Much of Caldwell’s
> energy over the last decade has been devoted to developing the Center for
> the History of Political Economy and its various programs, the success of
> which to date we count as outstanding. When the idea for CHOPE was first
> floated more than a decade ago, many scholars wondered whether it could, in
> fact, become a viable entity. The Center’s first decade has shown that it
> not only can be viable, but thrive. Its program of workshops, junior and
> senior visiting fellows, and summer institutes for economics graduate
> students and for professors and graduate students from across the humanities
> and social sciences (the latter funded by the National Endowment for the
> Humanities) have been resounding successes.
>
> At least as important, though, are Caldwell’s efforts in attracting scholars
> to participate in the Center’s various enterprises, including the visiting
> fellows program and the summer institutes. He has created a thriving
> intellectual community at the Center, a place where the oft-isolated members
> of our field can come together with other scholars to develop their own
> research and work with others on the development of theirs, whether through
> “water cooler” conversations or the weekly lunch and seminar series’.
> Caldwell’s mentorship of young scholars through these efforts has been
> particularly important, and these young scholars regularly credit the
> important influence that Caldwell and their time at the Center have had on
> their scholarly development.
>
> It is a credit to Caldwell, and indicative of the respect that he commands
> within the field, that he has been able to bring to the Center a group of
> scholars, young and “old,” who are so diverse in their interests, talents,
> and historiographic approaches. There are precious few in the field who
> could bring off these efforts with such success, and this diversity is
> essential for the Center to thrive in the long run. There are many ways of
> doing the history of economics well, but there are also strong prejudices
> about historiographic methods and the like. Caldwell is the consummate
> pluralist and rises above all of these prejudices for the greater good of
> the field.
>
> Caldwell’s service to the field goes well beyond CHOPE. He has served the
> HES as President (1999-2000), Vice President (1989-90), and member of the
> HES Executive Committee (1986-89), as well as being a member of the JHET
> editorial board since 2003. In his capacity as a member of the Board of
> Trustees of the Southern Economic Associate (1998-2002) and then as the
> society’s Vice President (2006-2008) and President (2011-12), the actively
> promoted work in the history of economics to the larger profession.
>
>     In short, Dr. Caldwell is one of the leading history of economics
> scholars of his generation, in the broadest sense of the term “scholar.” He
> has done path-breaking research and shows no signs of letting up on this
> front. He is a fabulous teacher who is excited about engaging students in
> the life of the mind. Through his work as Director of CHOPE, he is “giving
> back” to the profession and, in particular, to the field of the history of
> economics in a way that leaves him with no rivals on that front. We can
> think of no one whose contributions to the aims of the Society are more
> worthy of recognition as an HES Distinguished Fellow than Bruce Caldwell.
>
>
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