===================== HES POSTING ===================== HISTORY OF ECONOMICS AT U.MASS.-AMHERST The University of Massachusetts, Amherst, has no formal program in the history of economic thought. However we have a strong commitment to teaching that subject as a regular, core part of our economics curriculum at both the undergraduate and graduate levels; moreover we have a record of regularly offering such courses for over twenty years. The courses we offer are somewhat unusual in two respects. First, they are coordinated with other courses (micro, macro, political economy) in terms of content. That is, our core theory courses typically contain significant study of how theoretical propositions emerged and changed across time and across different, alternative paradigms of economic analysis. At the same time, our history of economic theory courses contain significant, substantial study of economic theories as well as how, when, where, and why they emerged, evolved, and disappeared across historical time. The second somewhat unusual quality of our courses in the history of economic thought is the extent to which such courses become --at least for portions of the curriculum-- courses in comparative economic theory. In other words, stress is placed on teaching how economics has always entailed a complex juxtaposition of and contest among alternative economic theories: now one, then another, rise to preeminence, fade, reappear in new forms, and so on. Thus classical political economy re-emerges as neoclassical or as post-Walrasian or as Austrian; Malthusian as a form of Keynesian neo-Malthusianism; Ricardo as neo-ricardian; Marxian as neo-Marxian, and so on. We find that students are often better able to integrate studies in the history of economic thought with the rest of the economics curriculum if the former include a significant portion of such comparative economic theory. In sum, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, assigns an important place to courses that study how alternative theories (or paradigms) of economics have evolved, contested, and shaped one another. Rick Wolff Professor of Economics University of Massachusetts at Amherst [lightly edited by HES assistant editor Paul Wendt] ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]