The Future of Publication in the History of Economic Thought: The View from HOPE

When we look ahead to the future of publication in the history of economic thought (HET) we are undertaking a market forecast, a task at which economists are notoriously inept. But we must give it a try. For at least two reasons this particular forecast is unusually complex: first, the market for publication in HET is extremely fragmented, and second, there is considerable uncertainty about behavior—on both the demand and the supply sides of the market—among those who write for and those who read our books and journals. It seems to me that the best way to grapple with this challenge is to look at the pieces of the market one at a time. I can see at least a dozen component parts, and probably there are more.

1. HET for the People

John Kenneth Galbraith is the prime example of a twentieth-century author who has successfully served a larger public beyond academe with HET. In The Affluent Society (1958) and then in his television documentary The Age of Uncertainty (1977), he used the history of economics to advance his theses about the condition of our economy and changes he thinks should be made in it. In this way, however, quite incidentally, he made known to hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions, of people the names of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Maynard Keynes, Thorstein Veblen, and lesser lights in our discipline. Kenneth Boulding (see, e.g., 1966, 1976) had some of the same skills, but he did not use them with as wide an audience. I can think of no one in our subdiscipline who today follows in their footsteps. The closest parallel is the reporting on contemporary economic theory by sophisticated journalists such as Louis Uchitelle, Robert Samuelson, and David Warsh, who often illuminate the present through discussion of the past. The late Leonard Silk and Herbert Stein did this for an earlier age. Unfortunately, Paul Krugman, probably the most widely read economist-turned-journalist of our time, seldom laces his columns with HET.

2. HET in the Liberal Arts

A landmark of publication in the history of economics in the twentieth century by any criterion is Robert Heilbroner's Worldly Philosophers (1953). This brilliant short volume has introduced countless college students to HET who either never went further in the economics discipline or were persuaded to do so by this exposure. For those who did go on in the field, this book often led them into specialized historical courses. The book takes the position, implicitly, that the history of economics, as of other major disciplines, is an important part of a liberal arts education. It does this not through exhortation but through charm and effective writing. Heilbroner's literary gifts are not given to many, and they have been bestowed on few others among us in our time. This is a pity, because the opportunities for extension of this genre seem endless, and the externalities for the broad field of HET abundant.

3. HET for All the Disciplines

Several of the great works in the history of economics were written, it would seem, for a wide scholarly audience, extending certainly beyond specialists in HET and even beyond the economics discipline. In this category Joseph A. Schumpeter's History of Economic Analysis (1954), Donald Winch's (1978) works on the politics of the classical economists, and Joseph Dorfman's Economic Mind in American Civilization (1946–59) stand out. Certainly, when I tell colleagues in another department my specialty, after their eyes cast off their glaze they may say, “Oh, Schumpeter” or “Oh, Winch” or “Oh, Dorfman.” Do we have works of more recent vintage that reach out across the disciplinary divides in the way these do? I have trouble coming up with candidates. In the more recent adventures of...