The 14th annual Summer Institute for the Preservation of the History of Economics will be held at the University of Richmond, June 14-17, 2013.  The Institute offers a forum for graduate students and distinguished scholars to present work in progress or more polished papers to a lively audience. Our mission is to help young scholars connect in a workshop setting with young and eminent scholars in the field.  Past speakers include Brad Bateman, Mauro Boianovsky, Marcel Boumans, James Buchanan, Dave Colander, Evelyn Forget, Dan Hammond, Samuel Hollander, Kevin Hoover, M. Ali Khan, Anthony Laden, David Levy, Charles McCann, Deirdre McCloskey, Steve Medema, Phil Mirowski, Leon Montes, Mary Morgan, Maria Pia Paganelli, Sandra Peart,  Malcolm Rutherford, the late Warren Samuels, Eric Schliesser, Gordon Tullock, Anthony Waterman, and Roy Weintraub.

For the 2013 session, we invite proposals on any topic in the history of economic thought. New participants are welcome, as are recommendations and submissions from any and all interested parties. We welcome suggestions and proposals in any area of the History of Economics.

We will organize a day examining the Thomas Jefferson Center, 50 years after the University’s 1963 “Secret Report” which marked the beginning of its end. The controversy came in spite or because of the three great book of 1962, Calculus of Consent, Growth of Industrial Production in the Soviet Union and In Search of  a Monetary Constitution.  Do we gain insight into the “Virginia School” by looking at the books as a whole?  A good many documents of the controversy have been located in the Library of Congress’s archives and will be posted on the Summer Institute web site well before the meeting.

The co-founders of the Thomas Jefferson Center – James Buchanan and Warren Nutter – were avowed disciples of Frank Knight. Knight’s view that democracy is “government by discussion” in which the issue is the correct solution of an objective problem not a compromise between party interests. This was revived by John Rawls in 1971 in the Theory of Justice.  Rutledge Vining’s famous response to Tjalling Koopmans’s methodology was fundamentally Knightian.  When Edmond Malinvaud looked back at the Vining-Koopmans discussion in 1983 he identified Vining’s “hypothesis seeking” with later concerns over specification search. Is it time to rethink Knight via both Rawls and Vining?

We continue our interest in 19th and 20th century economists who were also logicians.  What insight about their economics do we gain by considering their logic? Last year we were enormously fortunate to have two fine papers on Neville Keynes.  Might we hope for more papers along this line?

Now that natural experiments are widely used for identification of econometric models, we’d encourage papers on the history of natural experiments. John Snow’s work on cholera and the Milton Friedman-George Stigler use the SF earthquake as an exogenous shock to the housing market are common knowledge. But those are hundred years apart; is there anything in the gap?

We anticipate that the Institute will be able to offer honoraria for presenters and students. Participation by upper-level undergraduate and graduate students in economics or related disciplines is encouraged.

Conference events include good coffee and continental breakfasts, lunches and several dinners. Details about travel, housing and other matters will be posted early in 2013.

Please send expressions of interest, topics of interest, paper proposals or queries to:

David M. Levy, Professor of Economics, George Mason University [log in to unmask].

Sandra J. Peart, Dean, Jepson School of Leadership Studies [log in to unmask]

 


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David M. Levy
Professor of Economics
George Mason University
Fairfax VA 22030
703-993-2319