Defending the History of Economic Thought

摘要

Steven Kates's book Defending the History of Economic Thought comes at just the right time. As the history of economic thought (HET) often regains importance in times after economic crises, it is also since the financial crisis of 2008 that parts of the economics profession have become more self-reflexive, acknowledging to a certain extent the shortcomings of economic models in predicting what happened (see e.g., Hoover 2010). The fact that some economists turned towards the history of their subject matter in substantiating such arguments naturally provokes questions about the role that HET could and should play in economics. As for historians of economics, they have been rethinking their identity for some time now. Being under constant exposure to a persisting decline of the field, questions about the ideal intellectual home, the appropriate methodology and the subject matter of HET have been continuously addressed in the last decades (see e.g., Medema and Samuels 2001, Moscati 2008, Schabas 1992, Weintraub 1989 and 2002). Thus, the concrete arguments that Kates provides as to what historians of economics should do and how they can contribute to economics is a relevant topic.