Whither history of economic thought: A perspective from Russian and international scholars

Abstract

The article examines the problems and prospects of the history of economic thought (HET) based on a survey of 53 Russian and 170 international scholars. It has been demonstrated that the expansion of the range of historiographic methods, growing interest of the HET community towards the history of the 20th century economics as well as growing cooperation of historians of economic thought with the scholars from different social sciences and humanities have increased the attractiveness of the HET field among young researchers. These developments help to reduce the problem of the HET community’s aging and allows to look ahead to the future of the HET in a positive way. Against the background of these trends, theoretical, methodological and institutional features of the Russian community of historians of economic thought are analyzed. The analysis reveals that the members of the Russian community have more in common with their international colleagues than fundamental differences.