Economic Science Wars

Abstract

It is not news that the history of economics is disesteemed by most economists. There have been almost annual discussions at professional meetings about the institutional role of the history of economics. Indeed, a conference in 2001 documented the precarious state of the field in North America, and its even more perilous position in the United Kingdom and the Antipodes (Weintraub 2002b). With the exception of Duke University there are no longer any regularly scheduled graduate courses, let alone programs, in the history of economics at any “top” university in North America (Gayer 2002).