ABSTRACT OF PAPER

Title: Towards a World History of Economic Thought
Author: Magliulo Antonio


We have moved into a global and intercultural society where everyday face-to-face interaction takes place among people with different values and attitudes. Cultural diversity has become a key factor of peace and development. A growing need for mutual understanding fueled a new wave of interest in comparative studies: one compares legal, economical, political and cultural systems in order to assess their affinity or aversion. A comparative approach has been applied also by historians, including those engaged in the history of economic thought. The latter have basically followed a method centred on West. I believe we should take a step forward in the direction of a World History of Economic Thought (WHET) which embraces other great non-Western traditions applying a global comparative approach. Someone could observe that we have had a single history of economic thought, the Western one, simply because there is a single economic science. The latter has so far been written by Western economists but it is foreseeable that the new chapters of the future economics will be written by worldwide economists. My answer is that the task of the historian of economic thought is not limited to a reconstruction of the theoretical advancements. The history of economic thought is much more than the history of a science. It should also show how economic theories become economic cultures inspiring the behaviour of agents and the choices of policymakers in different parts of the world. This is why we can imagine a WHET. In a previous version of this paper, presented at the Lausanne Conference, I had emphasized the importance of a comparison between great economic cultures. In this new version, I have tried to explain why and how a World History approach could be applied to the field of the history of economic thought describing scope, subject and method of a WHET.

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