Call for Papers

The Practices of Economists in the Past and Today

Economists are practitioners, but the nature and history of their practices is not well understood. Practices have included the writing of tracts to convince the Crown of the benefits of trade, carrying out wide ranging surveys to tax and manage new colonies, taking part in debating societies to criticize government politics, travelling through the country to report on its conditions, designing statistical classification schemes to frame the economy, or modelling economic problems from the armchair. Practices have depended on institutional settings and technologies, which themselves have been shaped by their outcomes.

Were the theories and practices of the Physiocrats dependent on Quesnay’s function as physician to Madame de Pompadour? Was Keynes’s practice as an economist as much premised on his involvement with the worlds of administration and art as on the telephone as a new technology of communication? To what extent did the interdisciplinary setting of RAND condition the change in economics after the war? Is the idea of an economic experiment in the setting of Glasgow University in the 18th century comparable to the experimental way of life in the postwar system of mass education?

The purpose of the special theme of this year’s conference is to develop such studies and get a better insight on the interconnections between economic practices, theories, and the social settings in which economics is pursued. Topics and possible examples for discussion could include:

  • the role of visualisation (Phillips machine, simulations, graphs, barometers)
  • the role of new technologies and instruments (computers, fMRI-scans, paper money, joint ventures, z-tree)
  • the role of disciplines in shaping practices (economics-psychology; economics-sociology; economics-medicine)
  • the role of sites for practice (statistical institute, Political Economy Club, economic laboratory, Central Bank, Financial Times, Chestnut Street, Lancashire, rural Russia, Oxbridge, RAND)
  • the role of audience for practice (adviser to the King, journalist, academic)

    • Professor Charles Plott, Edward S. Harkness Professor of Economics and Political Science at the California Institute of Technology has kindly accepted to give one of the keynote lectures.

    Proposals for papers or sessions on all other aspects of the history of economic thought are also welcome. An abstract of about 400 words for a paper and about 600 words for a session should be submitted at the latest by November 15, 2009. To submit an abstract, register at the conference website and follow the instructions (to access the conference website click on the title at the top of this announcement). It is planned to publish a selection of papers on the special theme in a conference volume.