Economic history

"I define the subject matter of the history of economics to be economics which is not read to master present-day economics (although possibly it is read to learn the path by which we have reached the present)."

"Economics, I thus believe, has a useful past, a past that is useful in dealing with the future."

"The giants of economic science during the past two hundred years have been men concerned with the critical policy issues of their time. They studied the working of the economy in order to advocate better economic policies. But despite their concern with policy, they were not polemicists or politicians but men who sought to persuade their contemporaries in government and in the broader public by analysis and evidence that would meet the standards of professional debate."

"Well, I'd say, and this is probably a change from what I would have said when I was younger: Have a very healthy respect for the study of economic history, because that's the raw material out of which any of your conjectures or testings will come...But history doesn't tell its own story. You've got to bring to it all the statistical testings that are possible. And we have a lot more information now than we used to."

"While it is tempting to think of the history of economics as the history of a succession of great thinkers who advanced the quantity and quality of analysis in this field, seldom did these pioneers create perfected analyses."

"The writer of a history of economic thought must have, above all else, some principles of selectivity...The contemporary intellectual historian, in the space of one book, can therefore present only a limited number of the most important ideas of the most important thinkers ."

"History affects the present – not simply because it is what came before the present but also because it (or, rather, what people think they know about it) informs people’s decisions. … History also forces us to question some assumptions that are taken for granted. … History is useful in highlighting the limits of economic theory. Life is often stranger than fiction, and history provides many successful economic experiences (at all levels – nations, companies, individuals) that cannot be tidily explained by any single economic theory."

"Economic history is not politically correct. Many on the left therefore struggle with its findings."

"To find a substitute for laboratory experiments, economists pay close attention to the natural experiments offered by history."