"Nobody can separate the `internal' history of
science from the `external' history of its allies. The former does not count as
history at all. At best it is court historiography, at worst Legends of the
Saints. The latter is not history of `science', it is history." (Bruno
Latour, The Pasteurization of France, p. 218.)
This class generally concerns the history of 20th century
economics, focusing particular attention on the discipline as a mainstream
discourse in the
The seminar will meet once a week. There will be required material to be read each week. All required reading is in either a) the paperbacks How Economics Became a Mathematical Science by me, Backhouse’s The Ordinary Business of Life, or Niehans’s A History of Economic Theory, or b) e-reserve from the library. Some of the recommended material is to be found in The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, in four large oversize volumes, edited by John Eatwell, Murray Milgate, and Peter Newman. Duke owns three publicly accessible copies of this set of books, one each in the Fuqua and Law School Libraries, and one set in Perkins in the Reference Department. Please use these books at the table in Perkins where the books are shelved, and return them to their places immediately so that others may use them. There are no really reliable textbooks on 20th century economic thought: nevertheless, I have placed texts by Spiegel, by Beaud and Dosteller, and by Screpanti and Zamagni on reserve in the Perkins Reserve Room, on three hour closed reserve; some other materials are also on e-reserve -- see Readings.
Note that there is another excellent source for readings available on the
World Wide Web: Professor Roderick Hay is making available non-copyrighted
materials in the history of economics at Readings
on the Web. I should also note that there is a fairly comprehensive,
although somewhat idiosyncratic, history of economics website maintained at the
All students will keep a journal that will be a journal of responses to the reading, and questions which are raised by the readings which seem to merit class discussion. This journal is not notes on the reading but rather your response to the reading. I will collect these journals at the end of the semester.
For graduate students, the focus on the course is the reading, and the class discussions. I will moreover help shape individual projects, suited for the various graduate programs of the students, as appropriate.
Topics, and common readings to be done by all class members, follow below. Entries in The New Palgrave are in parentheses. Niehans’s book should be read continuously; with his chapters each focusing on an individual, you should be able to read about each of the people we are to discuss in class:
·
Week 1: Introduction
Required
·
Week 2: Economics Circa 1900
Required
·
Week 3: Institutional Economics
Required Reading: Chapter 9 (OBL); William Baumol’s “On Method in U.S.
Economics a Century Earlier” American
Economic Review, 75 (6) 1985; Bradley Bateman’s "Clearing the Ground:
The Demise of the Social Gospel Movement and the Rise of Neoclassicism in
American Economics" in Mary Morgan and Malcolm Rutherford’s From
Interwar Pluralism to Postwar Neoclassicism (1998); Bradley Bateman’s
“Reflections on the Secularization of American Economics” (Duke Library
e-journal) Journal of the History of
Economic Thought 30, 1, March 2008. {Background
·
Week 4: Business Cycles
Required Reading: Required
·
Weeks 5 and 6: Keynes
and Revolution?
Required
·
Week 7: General Equilibrium
Required
·
Week 8: Economics and World War II
Required Reading: Chapters 12 & 13, Backhouse (OBL); (handout) Chapter 4 of
Mirowski’s Machine Dreams. {Background
·
Week 9: Dynamics, and the Neoclassical
Synthesis
Required Reading: E. R. Weintraub, Chapter 3 in Stabilizing Dynamics (1991) and (handout) Chapter 4 of E. R. Weintraub’s Microfoundations
(1979). {Background Reading: Ingrao and Israel, Chap 8; (Ragnar Frisch,
George David Birkhoff,
Jan Tinbergen,
Henri Poincare,
Solomon Lefschetz
, Liapunov
Theory, Paul Samuelson, stability, dynamics, etc.)}
·
Week 10: Game Theory
Required Reading: Philip Mirowski’s "What Were von Neumann and Morgenstern
Really Up To?"; and Robert Leonard’s, "Creating a Context For Game Theory"
in E. Roy Weintraub's Toward a History of Game Theory
(1991).{Background Reading: Philip Mirowski’s "When Games Grow Deadly
Serious" in Craufurd Goodwin's Economics and National Security;
Robert Leonard "From Parlor Games to Social Science" in Journal
of Economic Literature, 33, June 1995, pp.730-761. (neoclassical
synthesis, real balance effect, Borel,
game theory, Oskar
Morgenstern)}
·
Week 11: Heterodoxies I: Post Keynesianism
Required Reading: Chapter 14, Backhouse (OBL); (handout) Chapter 6 & 7 in
J. E. King’s A History of Post Keynesian Macroeconomics.
·
Week 12: Heterodoxies II: Neo Austrianism
Required
·
Week 13: Neoliberalism
Required
· Week 14: Heterodoxies III: The Post-Autistic Economics Movement
Last modified June 30, 2008