History of Economics Playground

Reviewing (i.e. bashing) David Warsh’s Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations for the Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Philip Mirowski (2007: 492), concluded:

I pity the poor student of modern economics, trying to make some sense of what can only appear to the outsider as cryptic oracular pronouncements emitted from people who claim to be experts in the nature and validity of knowledge.* But when you get your news from Jon Stewart, your history from Paul Krugman, and your research facts from Wikipedia, maybe the nature of knowledge has itself changed.

The end of the sentence is tinged with what I believe is Mirowski’s utter disdain for popular culture. It takes, however, just a few days for a non-American person to realize that Jon Stewart’s Daily Show is certainly a better source of information than any other cable news (CNN included …), though I personally prefer the Colbert Report.

But my question is: what about Wikipedia? I have to confess I use it quite frequently,  for some basic research at work as well as for some more silly inquiry about music, cinema or celebrities at home.  Of course, I never take the information that is given there as granted and I think it is rather crucial to double check it with a more formal source of information, but I have largely benefited from the bibliography that is often provided at the end of articles. I am fairly impressed by the fact that some anonymous people have spent some time writing on E. Roy Weintraub or Waldemar Kaempffert, sometimes advertising the works of others without any reward. All in all, there is an underlying model of disinterestedness scientists should be proud (or envious?) of … Why, on the contrary, they spend so much time bashing it is therefore a mistery to me. Where does this idea that an increasing dissemination of knowledge corresponds to a degeneration of its substance come from? Jealousy? Elitism?  Declinism? Conservatism? Repugnance for the “neoliberal” ideology they think such modes of dissemination sustain?

PS: Thanks to Wikipedia, for example, I learned that philosopher of science Susan Oyama has been married to the late great contemporary composer Luciano Berio from 1966 to 1972. Pretty interesting …

* I should point out that Mirowski is not referring to David Warsh here but to Paul Krugman, though his using the plural of “experts” is quite intriguing.

Deservingly, Social Studies of Science is the top journal in History and Philosophy of Science in Web of Science’s Journal Citation Reports (Social Science edition, impact factor 1.651 in 2007). It is the journal of the 4S (The Society for Social Studies of Science) — the “S pun” goes as high as 6, with the Society for Social Studies of Science Student Section.

The journal’s latest call for papers is on the subject of “Privatizing Science: new commercial ways of knowing.” It reads:

The authors of these studies tend to polarize into what Mirowski has called the Economic Whigs – promoting technology transfer and public/private partnerships – and the Mertonian Tories – sounding the alarm bell to protect the norms of science while preaching a return to the supposed Mertonian Golden Age.

That’s right, Mirowski. The editors of the special issue will be Rebecca Lave (Indiana University), Samuel Randalls (University College London) and Philip Mirowski (Notre Dame).

Wouldn’t it be ironic if the enfant terrible of the history of economics became the gatekeeper of the economics of knowledge?

P.S. In the video Hayek turns up at 6:32, Phil at 8:40.

Biotechnologies reshape our relation to “nature”. All sorts of living organisms are engineered and marketed, it is now almost trivial even to remark it. Yet, I am still struck when I meet the most banal form of genetically modified organisms. As the linked page shows, it is not just about a model-organism: the JAX laboratory highlights the “key features” of the commodity, informs you of its availability, provides technical support, all with a price tag. With sales in July?

The economic logic is so much intertwined with the biological material that I feel that the story of the commodification of living organisms, well studied in the history of biology (eg, here or here), might find a place in the history of economics as well.

In Spring 1937 – I guess it is 1937, but it could be 1931, depending on how you interpret the handwriting -, Avis Windham, Genella Burke and Eve Smith bought a textbook of economic theory. It was Principles of Economics, written by Frederic Garver and Alvin Hansen and first published in 1928 by Ginn and Company. This textbook was among those recommended by Harvard teachers in the 1930s, and it has been read and studied by the likes of Robert Solow and Paul Samuelson, who, in their reminiscences, have described the book as a rather serious, but also dreary and poorly entertaining account of economic theory. It really looks rudimentary – not in content but in form – compared to its modern counterpart, which is full of tables, diagrams and figures.

In the 1930s, economics was a man’s field – some might say it still is. Yet I try to imagine those three women living in the same apartment, sharing this seemingly boring book, underlining some sentences – not many, actually -, writing their names all over it: on the edge, on the top, they wrote their three first names Avis, Genella and Eve, as well as their initials, gracefully forming the acronym AGE. I wonder why they bought this book : was it a course requirement, was it for general knowledge? Were they studying in an American university? Did they obtain a B.Sc. or an equivalent diploma? Where did they end up? Were they the typically liberated young women of the 1930s, with short hair and short skirts, or were they compliant daughters from a rather rich family? They bought just one book for all three: was it too expensive, or just uninteresting for them? 

I guess that knowing a little more about Avis, Genella and Eve, their lives, expectations and intents would bring us more knowledge about the status of economic theory in the 1930s than another article on Piero Sraffa. 

Yesterday, I saw a talk by Hans-Jorg Rheinberger, Director of the MPIWG. The title was “The Economy of the Scribble.” It is worth the footnote that “economy” in its Aristotelian sense, is gaining currency among cultural studies people. On my shelf is Catherine Waldby and Robert Mitchell’s Tissue Economies, by all opinions a really important book. There was no blood in Rheinberger’s talk, it was mostly about paper. With a really nice example from botany, Rheinberger pressed the idea that notes: the material practices of producing and distributing them, are critical to understand knowledge making. His metaphors were still unstable. At times notes were “containers,” at other times “reversible inscriptions,” and there were such things as “constellations.” He added that we can (encore une fois) reconsider scientific research communities in terms of the note taking and sharing.

It is all very sexy, as sexy as history can be. I caught myself lamenting that what I do is so very different from this both grand and detailed scrutiny of the scientist in action. It is odd to confess that I would like to dig into a study of a scientific drawing, a table, a graph, and the scribbled and stained notes that adjusted its creation. Why is it so romantic?

In February 1973, Paul Volcker announced a 10% depreciation of the dollar. It was the second such move in less than two years and a final blow to the appreciated dollar and the fixed exchange regime.

The respectable way to tell this story is to look at the dollar-gold parity. The inebriated way and somewhat more fun, is to look at the dollar-wine parity. Did Americans load up their cellars of French wine? Did they speculate on wine futures? Did the wine speculators understand monetary uncertainty?

Ad from the The New York Times, March 3, 1973, page 9.

A prerequisite for academic quality is an environment of researchers that more or less conduct the same kind of research. The big difficulty that we (young) historians of economics often face is that we lack this appropriate academic environment. We can contact each other through e-mail, but cannot grab a coffee to discuss informally whatever it is we have on our minds. This blog partly aims to be this informal platform, but does it work? As yet, it seems it doesn’t, there’s no coffee discussion going on. Are people reluctant to put their quick remarks on the internet? Can a blog not be a substitute for face-to-face contact? Or is there simply no real urge to meet each other informally outside conferences and workshops?

Paul Samuelson’s Economics sold up to 70,000 copies in its first year, in under two decades a million. If economics is a business, the entrepreneurs are not the economists but the publishers and McGraw-Hil Book Company ranks high on the list.

To follow the internationalization of American economics is to consider the influence of Samuelson, but to what extent is Samuelson’s success a corollary of the influence of McGraw-Hill? The internationalization literature makes passing reference to advances in communication that allowed dissemination of American texts. This frames the problem with publishers being ancillary to economists, but could it not be the other way round? After all, American economists had little to gain from an international economics, but publishers had a market to conquer.

Posed as a research question what is the publication trail of Samuelson’s Economics? Which is also to ask: who published it in each country? When? And for what reasons?

As far as I can tell, the history of McGraw-Hill is under researched. The only book length examination of its past is as old as 1959, The Endless Frontier by Roger Burlingame. A history of McGraw-Hill published by McGraw-Hill reads like an in-house piece to celebrate the company and its genius.