No History of Ideas, Please, We're Economists

I t is no secret that the study of the history of economic thought is held in low esteem by mainstream economists and sometimes openly disparaged as a type of antiquarianism. There is nothing new in this. Practically every commentator on the role of history of economic thought in modern economics in the last 30 years has lamented the steady decline of interest in the area since the end of World War II and its virtual disappearance from university curricula, not just at the graduate but sometimes even at the undergraduate level. The trend is more pronounced in the United States than in Europe but it is manifest just about everywhere. However, along with fewer and fewer university courses in history of economic thought, there appear to be more and more scholars attending scholarly meetings in history of economic thought and publishing articles about the history of economic thought. History of thought journals are burgeoning, and their quality seems to be high and steadily improving. In addition to the premier History of Political Economy founded in 1969 and the old History of Economics Review founded in 1973, there is Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology appearing annually since 1983, the Journal of the History of Economic Thought dating from 1990, the European Journal of the History of Economic Thought and History of Economic Ideas