The Construction of the Canonical History of Financial Economics

Only recently have economists turned their attention to the history of financial economics; indeed, the earliest studies date from just the middle of the last decade.By and large, the evolution of financial economics has been presented as one of linear progress.However, Jovanovic 2002 explains that the development of the subdiscipline was anything but linear, as one would see by examining the actual historical record.Moreover, Jovanovic 2003b shows that construing the story of financial economics as one of linear progress is inconsistent with much historical data 1 -data that renders the linear-progress story false.This article deals with that problem.It has two major goals.The first is to explain the origin of the linear-progress story with respect to the purported history of financial economics that economists have typically told.This article suggests that the mismatch between the typical presentation and the historical data has arisen because most commentators have drawn on the canonical history of financial economics-a history