The History of Economic Thought in Australia and New Zealand

The History of Economic Thought Society of Australia (HETSA) was formed in 1981 at a conference at the University of New England (UNE), Armidale. John Pullen, Ray Petridis, and John Wood were the main initiators of the formation of the society, the objectives of which included a regular newsletter or bulletin, as well as a biennial (and now annual) conference. John Wood edited the first five issues of the newsletter, and Peter Groenewegen the sixth. John Pullen took over in 1987 and produced eight issues of the HETSA Bulletin in four years. The Bulletin was filled with book reviews, news and notes, conference reports, and a small number of generally short articles. I took over the editorship in 1991 with issue 15 of what was now called the History of Economics Review (HER). Under my editorship sixteen issues appeared (two of which were double issues) containing 184 articles or substantive review articles. Acknowledging the double issues, this averages out at about ten articles per issue. John King took over the editorship with issue 31 in 2000. The success of the journal helps explain the growth of the HETSA from 70 members in 1991 to 154 in 1995. Membership has now stabilized at about 170 members, of whom 40 percent are overseas-based (overseas subscribers also doubled in the first half of the last decade).

An examination of the 184 articles published during my editorship gives us some useful information about the state of HET in Australasia. Of these articles, 62.5 percent were provided by authors affiliated with Australian institutions. The remaining sixty-nine articles (37.5 percent) came from ten other countries. More than half (55 percent) came from North America (United States, thirty; Canada, eight). The Australian contributions came from twenty-two universities. This is a welcome result in terms of coverage and includes representation from all of the “Group of Eight,” Australia's leading research-intensive universities. Contributions from these eight universities account for 24 percent of all articles. The universities omitted are generally very small institutions or inactive in a research sense. There are only about six universities where one might have expected some HET research, but none has surfaced in HER. Surprisingly, the South Australian HET contribution is meager—one article from the three universities combined. Eight Australian universities account for 66 percent of the Australian HER articles. These are the University of Sydney (fifteen), University of New South Wales (UNSW) (twelve), Murdoch (ten), Newcastle and La Trobe (nine), Macquarie, Charles Sturt, and the Australian National University (seven). One could reasonably say that three out of every four Australian universities that are research-active have scholars who publish in the history of economic thought in HER.

Sixty-eight Australian authors accounted for the 115 domestic contributions. This figure illustrates that at least 15 percent of academic economists in Australia write on the history of economics, presumably a higher figure than a comparable North American survey would find. It is quite a pleasing result that so many economists devote at least part of their research effort to the history of the discipline. In Australia few academics have the luxury of specializing exclusively in the history of economics, and most have one or two other areas of research. This “multi-skilling” enhances their employability and means that they can keep up with latest developments in the discipline.

Despite the pleasing overall percentage of academics interested in historical inquiry, it should be noted that only in a few institutions is there a viable core or team of researchers in HET. At most places it is a single researcher with perhaps one or two other sympathetic colleagues. The leading Australian researchers were Robert Leeson (seven articles), Peter Groenewegen (six), Allen Oakley and Alex Millmow (five), Mike White and Steve Kates (four), and John Pullen, John King, Rod O'Donnell, Tony Aspromourgos, and Evan...