Economic history

Economic history is the study of economies or economic phenomena of the past, including the history of economic thought, which deals with different thinkers and theories, from the ancient world to the present day, in the subject that became political economy and economics.

Quotes

• I define the subject matter of the history of economics to be economics which is not read to master present-day economics (although possibly it is read to learn the path by which we have reached the present).
  • George Stigler, "Does Economics Have a Useful Past?", History of Political Economy (1969)

• Economics, I thus believe, has a useful past, a past that is useful in dealing with the future.
  • George Stigler, "Does Economics Have a Useful Past?", History of Political Economy (1969)

• The giants of economic science during the past two hundred years have been men concerned with the critical policy issues of their time. They studied the working of the economy in order to advocate better economic policies. But despite their concern with policy, they were not polemicists or politicians but men who sought to persuade their contemporaries in government and in the broader public by analysis and evidence that would meet the standards of professional debate.
  • Martin Feldstein (1989), Foreword to New Ideas from Dead Economists by Todd Buchholz.

• Well, I'd say, and this is probably a change from what I would have said when I was younger: Have a very healthy respect for the study of economic history, because that's the raw material out of which any of your conjectures or testings will come...But history doesn't tell its own story. You've got to bring to it all the statistical testings that are possible. And we have a lot more information now than we used to.
  • Paul Samuelson, in Conor Clarke. "An Interview With Paul Samuelson, Part Two". The Atlantic (June 18, 2009)

• While it is tempting to think of the history of economics as the history of a succession of great thinkers who advanced the quantity and quality of analysis in this field, seldom did these pioneers create perfected analyses.
  • Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics, 4th ed. (2010), Ch. 25. The History of Economics.

• The writer of a history of economic thought must have, above all else, some principles of selectivity...The contemporary intellectual historian, in the space of one book, can therefore present only a limited number of the most important ideas of the most important thinkers .
  • E. K. Hunt, History of Economic Thought: A Critical Perspective (3rd ed., 2011), Preface

• History affects the present – not simply because it is what came before the present but also because it (or, rather, what people think they know about it) informs people’s decisions. … History also forces us to question some assumptions that are taken for granted. … History is useful in highlighting the limits of economic theory. Life is often stranger than fiction, and history provides many successful economic experiences (at all levels – nations, companies, individuals) that cannot be tidily explained by any single economic theory.
  • Ha-Joon Chang, Economics: The User's Guide (2014), Ch. 3 : How Have We Got Here?

• Economic history is not politically correct. Many on the left therefore struggle with its findings.
  • Niall Ferguson, "On being called a racist", The Spectator (December 17, 2011)

• To find a substitute for laboratory experiments, economists pay close attention to the natural experiments offered by history.
  • N. Gregory Mankiw, Principles of Economics (7th ed., 2015), Ch. 2. Thinking Like an Economist