There is room for "American" economoic theory in the sense that
Americans altered European theories or even created ad hoc versions
of their own in the process of having to create their own policies
-- most people who work in economics, and American intellectual
history for that matter, don't know what is common currency in
early American political history, which is that the colonial
legislatures were functioning as effectively independent polities
through most of the 1700s. They made a number of decisions with
regard to government regulation, monetary policy, and "encouraging"
development (or not). And there were very real differences that
emerged in Masschusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
But there were also some groups that were more formal -- like the
Tuesday Club in Annapolis in the 1740s-1750s.
But the other topoic -- interwar pluralism to postwar
Marshall/samuelson? I like that one. Sounds very interesting.
I am also personally intrigued by the way economics looks
to ME, a semi-outsider (I have a lot of grad econ training, but
my Ph.D> is actuallyin history) -- I like applied micro, which
seems to be a jumble of mix-and-match options that can be
rearranged to suit the specific situation under analysis. I am
really perplexed, as an ecnomic historian, by the continuing
attraction for a number of economists in my field for a
one-size-fits-all type of theory. They brag that they don't
even READ the applied literature. It is not at all uncommon in
my field for economists to hang an entire interpretation of a
situation one or two hundred years ago on the presumption that
if there are a number of buyers and sellers, then there is
competition in the labor market, and MPL must equal wages, and
we must be at a pareto optimum. I've now seen it applied to
child labor, making the argument that it's what everyone must
have wanted so it must have been optimal. Insanity. But I think
what I am seeing is an application of a very strong Houthakker
level version of revealed preference. I need a way to tell
historians that -- to tell them this is NOT the only way to
do economic theory! (The last time I tried to say that on econhist,
I got yelled at VERY MUCHLY by Don McCloskey ...)
Different subject: Do you know anyone who might be interested
in conversing with me (internet) about a discovery I made regarding
the way this MPL=wages assumption is getting used in econ hist?
I have an article from the JEH, a year ago, where the author
succesively redefined terms and ignored assumptions in the literature
to wander his way BACKWARDS from the economist of information
through Marshall-Samuelson through Marx all the way back to
Nassau Senior and the Factory Acts debate, I kid you not. By the
end of the article he was using labor theory of value unabashedly --
BUT -- he never SAID that's what he was doing, and he was continuing
to invoke the assumption MPL=wages! It's really quite a remarkable
article -- and quite remarkable that it got buy so many economists.
I also am picking up in the MPL=wages being invoked to
defend certain policies as coming very very close to the econ theories
early in this century that tied economicd growth to national character
or religion or race. A lot of the economists who wrote about this
weren't comfortable with the full Marshallean model, but they liked
Clark's explanation of wages.
Do you know anyone who would be interested in this?
Finally (sorry this is long; got this far, might as well
finish) -- I've been working on a manuscript describing the ad
hoc economic theories historians use in their analysis, and trying
to make connections between the sources of those theories, and
assumptions that historians unwittingly drag into the analysis
with these borrowed concepts. Do you know anyone who would be
interested in THAT?
I know this was a lot. I was really excited that this list began,
because I have had no way to find people who do history of economic
thought. So I hope I haven't dumped too much in your lap!
:-) Mary Schweitzer
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