================= HES POSTING ================= Regarding Ross Emmett's response to Robert Leeson on how an economic historian can uniquely contribute to contemporary policy issues, ultimately policy makers will evaluate the potential contributions of social scientists based on whether they can help policy makers make useful and meaningful decisions. While Ross outlines several issues that one might take into consideration in the process of formulating policy, there are surely other valuable functions in addition to the ones he mentions that economic history can give to current policy formulation. First, I would stress the importance of understanding long-run dynamic processes in developing viable policy responses to contemporary problems. Robert Fogel stressed this in his 1993 Nobel Address, where he contended that "failure to take account of history...has often led to a misunderstanding of current economic problems by investigators who have not realized that their generalization rested upon transient circumstances. Nowhere is the need to recognize the role of long-run dynamics more relevant than in such pressing current issues as medical care, pension policies, and development policies." In my own policy-related work, I have found that an exploration into the historical factors shaping current conditions is important to understanding the policy context and the subjective, transient nature of defining property rights. I also notice an interesting melding of history and economic theory in the emerging literature on long-run processes, path dependence, technology lock-ins and related issues being examined by analysts such as Paul David and Brian Aurther. This literature has generated some interesting implications for policy and debates over the role of government. Regards. ********************************************************************* T.S. Jayne Associate Professor Department of Agricultural Economics 401c Agriculture Hall, East Lansing, MI 48824-1039 Tel: (517) 355-0131 Fax: (517) 432-1800 ********************************************************************* ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]