Is there a future for the robust sort of capitalism favoured by Adam Smith or have we reached a limit to Anglo-American capitalism as the engine of human betterment? Over the last few decades scholars from many points of view have found the basis for a uniquely defensible position in Smith's work. It is therefore [...]
For Smith, impartiality is the means by which we come to know and do what's right. Since we all wish to be praiseworthy, we'll at least try for impartiality and so come to do what deserves praise. Here's a key passage on this
The man who is conscious to himself that [...]
Reading for my class today, TMS part 1.
The chapter on ambition begins with the lovely passage:
It is because mankind are disposed to sympathize with more entirely with our joy than with our sorrow, that we make parade of our riches, and conceal our poverty. Nothing is so mortifying as [...]
On my on again off again issue -- I plead the increased expectations related to being a dean of a School! I do intend to return to this blog site systematically again. I'm teaching Competition, Cooperation and Choice this semester and we're reading Smith (Adam - TMS and WoN) and [...]
The annual /History of Political Economy/ Conference -- this year on the topic "Robert Solow and the Development of Growth Economics" -- will be held 25-27 April 2008 at Duke University. Further information, including the tentative program, can be found on the Duke History of Economy Group website (http://econ.duke.edu/HOPE), [...]
3 conference announcements of interest to historians of economics have come in recently:
1 )from Steve Medema) The 40th annual UK History of Economic Thought
Conference will be held at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, over 3-5 September,
2008. The conference will retain its traditional intimate format, with substantial
[...]
Here's a taste of what David will talk about at the Robbins conference in London. We've obtained a number of Rawls' copies of books by economists, including Rawls' copy of The Nature and Significance. So we can see what struck Rawls as he read Robbins. Here, you can see [...]
The Robbins conference website is now set to go!
[sticerd.lse.ac.uk]
Readers know that I studied with Sam Hollander. Perhaps because of this, I have long felt that Sam's teacher, Lionel Robbins, deserves more recognition than he has been given by the profession. So I am very pleased that N&S is now 75 years old; we can use the [...]
Yesterday we took Colonel Leo Thorsness, leader in Residence at the Jepson School of Leadership Studies, to the airport. Before this, he spent 2 1/2 days with our faculty and students -- talking to newly admitted Jepson students about his days in Hanoi Hilton, to students in [...]
Barkley Rosser, at JMU, has posted this note at the HES list:
I am pleased to announce that there is a tenure track, assistant professor job opening availableat James Madison University, for which the primary field desired is history of economics, with other fields with that being anything (although [...]
David Levy and I recently wrote this in the wake of James Watson's recent resignation:
Watson’s remarks call to mind debates in the 19th Century over Ireland and the West Indies. There, too, the debate centered on the seemingly simple question of whether the Irish (or the former slaves in Jamaica) were as intelligent [...]
The recent Nobel set off a flurry of remarks to which I don't hope to add. But I should say that it also prompted a note to me from Kyu Sang Lee, former Young Scholar at the HES and participant in the Summer Institute at George Mason [...]
Perry Mehrling has lined up a terrific set of sessions for the ASSAs. If you're going, check these out. The ASSAs allocate sessions and pay attention to attendance (someone counts!) so we need a good turn out for all. Last year, there were people standing in the doorway and sitting [...]
This is a fascinating resource for those of us like to rummage around with the ideas of dead economists.
Malcolm Rutherford writes to the HES listserve: "I have just completed an update of my Famous Economists' Grave Sites web pages. I have included many more links and found [...]
Goncalo Fonseca tells the HES below that Terence W. Hutchison has died. I came to know his work through that of Sam Hollander. I failed initially to understand the significance of his assessment of Jevons on experimental legislation. This was my own shortcoming; I soon came to appreciate [...]
I'm taking the paper on Galton down until David and I sort out the argument better. James Surowiecki is has pointed to a key error in the original sketch -- since, as he notes, Galton did in fact compute the mean. At this point we're considering what part of the [...]
David Levy and I have sketched out a paper in which we check the expertise of the past. We can do that since the data that were used by Francis Galton -- people's guesses about the weight of an ox -- have been preserved. The paper first talks about Galton's [...]
The program for the ECHE conference, to be held at the Certosa di Pontignano, Siena
(Italy), on 4-6 October, is below.
-----------------------------
Thursday, 4 October
7.00 pm Registrati=n
8.00 pm Welcome Dinner
Friday, 5 October
9.00 [...]
Apparently the ASB has changed its mind. Thanks to all who supported the Australians. Sometimes things do work out. Here's the note I (and others who wrote) received from the authorities:
___________
Thank you for your submission to the Australian Standard Research Classification review.
Your concerns with [...]
>Dear Colleagues,
>
>I am writing in response to the announcement that the Australian Bureau of
>Statistics is planning to remove the areas of history of economic thought
>and economic history from its calculations of levels of economic research.
> I do this in my capacity as editor of the [...]
From Sumitra Shah
About the 'unhappy' marriage between heterodoxy and HET which has finally
come to the surface for a discussion:
If mainstream scholars from elite schools have a disdain for alternative
perspectives, it is based on more than just a dislike of its critics. Others
have written about [...]
