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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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