"Nobody can separate
the `internal' history of science from the `external' history of its allies.
The former does not count as history at all. At best it is court
historiography, at worst Legends of the Saints. The latter is not history of
`science', it is history." (Bruno Latour, The
Pasteurization of France, p. 218.)
This class generally concerns the history of
20th century economics, focusing attention on the development of the
discipline as a mainstream discourse in the United States. One of the
particular concerns of the course will be to suggest the ways, and the history
of how, a broad and varied set of approaches and practices early in the 20th
century evolved, by late in the 20th century, to a single
mainstream, now called neoclassical economics or some such
variant, and a variety of marginalized discourses mostly critical of
neoclassical economics.
The seminar will meet once a week. There will
be required material to be read each week. All required reading is in either a)
the paperback The Ordinary Business of
Life (OBL) by Backhouse, b) E-reserve at the course’s Blackboard
site, or linked to “Course Documents” on the course’s Blackboard site.
Course
Requirements: Each week each student
will prepare a one to two page typed response to that week’s non-textbook readings, to be turned in
at the end of that class. Those responses will be the basis for the seminar
discussion. 30% of each student’s course grade will be based on those weekly
response papers, and participation in the seminar discussion. Additionally, as
befits a course with “R” and “W” designations, students undertake a research
project, which will result in a final paper or web document. Students work in
pairs as part of that class project. Resources will include the Social
Science Citation Index, JSTOR
(the online searchable data base of economics journals), Silver Platter and other tools (and
especially archival materials in the Economists’
Papers Project).
The focus of the course is the class
project/paper. In Fall 2011 the class project will be
an exploration of the public role of economists. Students will examine the
careers of one of several economists who played interesting roles in public
affairs in the first half of the 20th century: Calvin Bryce Hoover, Martin
Bronfenbrenner, Frank W. Fetter, and Arthur I. Bloomfield. These economists’ papers are all available in
the Economists Papers Project. Pairs of students – a co-author writing team -
will work together on the research project using published materials,
interviews, archival sources, and so on.
It is my intention as well to make sure that very successful projects
can be developed, via independent study in Spring
2012, into honors papers to secure graduation with distinction in economics.
The paper grade will constitute 70% of each student’s final course grade.
I will work closely with you, functioning as
your research director, to facilitate development of the project. We will meet
as necessary in tutorial sessions so that I may assess your progress and guide
the work that remains to be done. These consultations will specifically involve
working with you on successive drafts attending to the structure and argument
and language, in short the rhetoric, of the final document as is appropriate
for a course that carries the "writing" designation. Your
attendance at the seminars and the tutorials is required. Unapproved absences will result in a “0”
for the participation grade.
The final paper will be turned in on
the last day of class.
Weekly discussions
are based on common readings to be done by all class members for the specific class session:
Week 1.
First Class Meeting. Information session; discussion of class
project, reading responses, class resources, etc.
Week 2.
English Economic
Thought Circa 1900. Required Reading: Chapter
8 (OBL); Chap 9, "Economic Orthodoxies", in Robert Skidelsky, John
Maynard Keynes, 1986 (e-reserve). {Background Reading: Chap 2,
"Cambridge Civilisation", in Robert
Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes, 1986; Chap 8, "The Marginal
Revolution" in Mark Blaug; Chap 4, "Leon
Walras" in Bruna Ingrao and Giorgio Israel, The
Invisible Hand, 1990.}
Week 3.
The Development of American Economics. Required Reading: Chapter 9 (OBL); Bradley Bateman’s
"Clearing the Ground: The Demise of the Social Gospel Movement and the
Rise of Neoclassicism in American Economics" in Mary Morgan and Malcolm
Rutherford’s From Interwar Pluralism to Postwar Neoclassicism (1998)
(e-reserve); Malcolm Rutherford’s “American Institutional Economics in the
Interwar Period” in Samuels, Biddle, and Davis’s A Companion to the History of Economic Thought (2003) (Blackboard
Course Document). {Background Reading: "Marginalism
and Historicism in Economics: Chapter 6" of Dorothy Ross’s The Origins
of American Social Science (1991) (e-reserve); Bradley Bateman’s
“Reflections on the Secularization of American Economics” (Duke Library
e-journal) Journal of the History of
Economic Thought 30, 1, March 2008; William Baumol’s “On Method in U.S. Economics a Century Earlier”
American Economic Review, 75 (6)
1985}
Week 4.
Business
Cycles. Required Reading: Chapter 10
(OBL); Chapters 3 & 4 in Mary S. Morgan’s The History of Econometric
Ideas (1990). (e-reserve) {Background Reading: (business cycles); Judy L.
Klein’s Statistical Visions in Time
(1997); Kyun Kim’s Equilibrium Business Cycle Theory
(1988}.
Week 5.
Keynes and Revolution? Required
Reading: Chapter 7 of Francesco Louça’s The Years of High Econometrics
(Blackboard course document); “The General Theory of Employment” by J. M. Keynes:
{Background Reading: Chapter 15 of
Skidelsky’s John Maynard Keynes, Volume 2 (e-reserve); L. Klein’s 1947 The
Keynesian Revolution, excerpts Blackboard; Patinkin’s
1965 Money, Interest, and Prices,
excerpts Blackboard.}
Week 6.
General Equilibrium and The Neoclassical Synthesis. Required
Reading: Chapter 11 (OBL); Chapter 6 in Weintraub’s General
Equilibrium Analysis: Studies in Appraisal,
1985, (e-reserve); Chapter 4 of E. R. Weintraub’s Microfoundations
(1979) (Blackboard Course
Document) {Background Reading: von
Neumann (1945) "A Model of General Economic Equilibrium" Review
of Economic Studies, 13, pp. 1-9 (translation from the German 1937 Ergebnisse paper) Blackboard; McKenzie (1954) "On
Equilibrium in Graham's Model of World Trade and Other Competitive
Systems", Econometrica 22, pp. 147-161 Blackboard; Arrow and
Debreu (1954) "Existence of an Equilibrium for a Competitive
Economy" Econometrica 22, pp. 265-290. Blackboard; }
Week 7.
Economics and World War II. Required Reading: Chapters 13, Backhouse (OBL);
Leonard, Chaps 12-13 of Von Neumann, Morgenstern, and the Creation of Game
Theory (Blackboard Course Document){Background Reading: Judy Klein (2011)
"How I learned to Stop Worrying and Start Satisficing" Working Paper. Blackboard;
von Neumann, J. (1928). "Zur Theorie
der Gesellschaftsspiele." Mathematische Annalen 100:
295-320 (English version: "On the Theory of Games of Strategy,"
trans. Sonya Bargmann. In Contributions to the
Theory of Games, vol 4, edited by A .W. Tucker and R.
D. Luce (Princeton, 1959), pp.13-42 Blackboard; von Neumann, J. and O.
Morgenstern (1944). The Theory of Games and Economic
Behavior. Princeton, NJ, Introduction, pp.1-43. Blackboard}
Week 8.
The Modern Economist: Engineer or Expert? Required Reading: Mary Morgan’s “Economics” in
Porter’s and Ross’ Cambridge History of Science Volume 7 (e-reserve); and
Chapter 6 of Michael Bernstein’s A Perilous Progress (e-reserve).
Week 9.
The Economics Profession in the U.S., Britain, and
France. Required Reading: Introduction and Chapter 1
of Marion Fourcade’s Economists and Societies:
Discipline and Profession in the United States, Britain, and France 1890s to
1990s (2009) (Blackboard Course Document)).
Week 10.
Economics among the Social Sciences. Required Reading: Backhouse and Fontaine’s “Introduction: Contexts of Postwar
Social Science” (Blackboard Course Document).
Week 11.
Neoliberalism. Required Reading: Backhouse’s “The Rise of Free
Market Economics” in Medema and Boettke’s
The Role of Government in the History of Economic Thought (2005) (Blackboard
Course Document); Philip Mirowski (2009) "Postface: Defining Neoliberalism"
in Philip Mirowski and Dieter Plahwe
(eds.) The Road from Mont Pelerin, pp. 417-455,
Blackboard. .
Week 12.
Heterodoxies.
Mata’s “Migrations and Boundary Work: Harvard, Radical Economists, and the
Committee on Political Discrimination”.
Week 13.
Historiography. Required Reading: Prologue, in Backhouse (OBL);
Weintraub’s “How Should We Write the History of 20th Century Economics?(Blackboard Course Document); Weintraub (2011) "Lionel
W. McKenzie and the Proof of the Existence of a Competitive
Equilibrium" Journal of Economic Perspectives. Blackboard.
Week 14.
Tutorials on Final Paper