REMINDER -- CALL FOR PAPERS FOR THE 1997 HOPE CONFERENCE -- REMINDER ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- CALL FOR PAPERS 1997 HISTORY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY CONFERENCE "THE TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICAN ECONOMICS: FROM INTERWAR PLURALISM TO POSTWAR NEOCLASSICISM" The theme of this conference is "The Transformation of American Economics: From Interwar Pluralism to Postwar Neoclassicism." This theme relates to a highly important episode in the history of economics: the development of what would now be regarded worldwide as mainstream American economics -- the formalized neoclassical economics that has come to dominate the major American graduate schools, the leading journals, and economic policy making in the years since 1950. This situation can be contrasted with that of the interwar period. In this earlier period American economics was notable for its eclecticism and concern with empirical issues. There was no single dominant research program, and a considerable amount of intercommunication between those with differing viewpoints. How did this wide range of beliefs and approaches become transformed into the postwar mainstream? How did neoclassicism, and particularly neoclassicism in a formalized form, develop a dominant position among American economists and displace other programs and approaches? The subsequent internationalization of this type of economics was the subject of the 1995 HOPE conference, so this theme leads the historian of thought back into a consideration of the formation of this brand of economics and of the particular conditions that account for its rise to preeminence. We would be interested in receiving proposals for papers that address this theme. Some possibilities include studies of the development, rise or fall, of particular schools of thought or research programs that contributed to the overall transformation; the changing character of economic discourse over the period, including studies of professional journals; The impact of changing concepts of science or of modernism; of professionalization, the role of funding agencies, and the demand for a technocratic economics; the role of the in-migration of economists from continental Europe: the interaction between academic economics and policy issues; and the role of the changing social, political, and ideological context in America. Proposals should take the form of an abstract of not more than 500 words outling your paper and its contribution to the conference theme. The proposal should be mailed or faxed (not e-mailed) to BOTH of us, clearly marked HOPE Conference, and sent no later than December 1 1995. We expect to receive more proposals than we can accomodate, and we will decide which to accept by February 1 1996. Papers should be ready to circulate to conference participants by February 1997. Papers presented at the conference will be considered for inclusion in the 1998 HOPE Supplement volume. The conference will be held at Duke University, probably in March 1997. Dr. Mary Morgan, Dept. of Economic History, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton St., London, WC2A 2AE, England. Phone 171 955-7081; Fax 171 855-7730 e-mail [log in to unmask] Professor Malcolm Rutherford, Dept. of Economics, University of Victoria, PO Box 3050, Victoria, BC, Canada, V8W 3P5. Phone 604 721-8531; Fax 604 721-6214 e-mail [log in to unmask]