History

The History of Economic Thought (HET) Website concentrates information and resources on the history of economic thought, from the ancient times until the modern day. It is designed for students, researchers and the general public, who are interested in learning about economics from a historical perspective.

The aim of the two-semester sequence is to explore a coherent alternative to neoclassical and post-Keynesian theory that does not rely in any way on concepts of utility maximization, rational choice, rational expectations, or perfect/imperfect competition.

Many thought the financial crash was a final blow to capitalsim. Why does it still reign supreme? Anatole Kaletsky outlines the shape of things to come.

Chaired by Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz and Michael Spence, INET has assembled a global team of leaders and scholars calling for new thinking & new rules for the world economy

This research project traces the history of German energy policy from 1945 to the present. It explores the political economy behind Germany’s transition from coal, to oil, to green energy, the crises driving these shifts, and the evolving efforts to balance affordability with security and environmental protection.

This research project will study the long-run interactions between transport infrastructure and economic development using spatially-disaggregated data for England and Wales over the period c.1817—2011. It will look to inform policy toward large investments in physical infrastructures.

This research project uses macroeconomic data going back to the mid-19th century to analyze issues such as the relation between income distribution and economic growth; and how debt, asset prices, and growth moved together the last 160 years.

This research project creates a new database of international capital flows from the early 19th century, when London became the financial capital of the world, until 1931, when international capital markets collapsed.

This research project explores Chinese economic thought of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, with direct relevance to the present day, and in particular focuses on one specific thinker, Wang Yanan, and the intellectual debates he animated and in which he participated as a major theorist.

This research project investigates how economists sought to make their science more relevant to real-world issues and policy design from the mid-1960s on, by becoming “applied economists.”

This research project develops an intellectual biography of the Hungarian economist Tibor Scitovsky (1910-2002), who is known primarily for his path breaking 1976 book, The Joyless Economy.

This research project studies the innovation of mortgage-backed securities in the 18th century in order to understand the effects of securitization on financial and real markets.

This research project shows the European origins of development economics between the late 1930s and the early 1960s and describes how the postwar global challenge of development took shape.

This research project rescues the work of the London and Cambridge Economic Service, arguably the first body in Britain to collect and disseminate economic statistics.

This research project re-examines the debates around the time of the Great Depression and compares them with those before and since the start of the Long Recession in 2007/8, focusing on Keynes, Hayek, and their followers.

This research project explores the origins of covered mortgage bonds and tests for the impact of financial development on economic growth by analyzing the Prussian Landschaften.

This research project formulates a normative theory of learning both preferences and probabilities that explains a broad spectrum of economic behavior heretofore judged irrational.

This research project creates a systematic and publically available database of macroeconomic and structural conditions in all IMF loan agreements signed after 1987.

This research project compiles and annotates the archival legacy of the Bellagio Group’s founders Fritz Machlup, Robert Triffin, and William Fellner as they sought to reform the international financial system between 1963 and 1974.

This research project commences work on a supplementary edition covering much of John Maynard Keynes’s significant writings on economics, philosophy, and politics that remain unpublished.

This research project investigates the reasons behind the US financial crisis by applying the tools of the history of economic thought to the postwar evolution of US antitrust law and economic

This research project contends that Piero Sraffa tried to develop an economic theory that could stand up as an alternative to the orthodox theory of value and provide a foundation for the Keynesian and post-Keynesian alternatives.

This research project replicates a large number of studies by teaching replication to students, with the results included in a wiki project about the replicability of research.

This research project argues that economics currently lacks the capability to assess when mathematical modeling, on its own, is a sufficient means for understanding a given set of social phenomena.

This research project follows freed slaves from when they first applied for their land under the Southern Homestead Act until 1900 to learn how access to free land influenced their economic progress.

This research project examines the political and ideological implications of different ways of framing the relationship between humanity, nature, and the world of goods.

This research project combines 140 years of economic history with state-of-the-art econometric methods to gain new insights into the relationship between finance, growth, and crises.

This research project provides us with a greater understanding of why the Coase theorem came to captivate the minds of economics and legal scholars and how its impact on economics and law reshaped both the theoretical landscape and legal-economic policymaking.

This research project constructs new measures of slavery as a state-sanctioned property rights institution and documents how slavery impacted economic development in US history.

This research project deepens the understanding of the history of economics as a discipline by making economic texts of historical importance available to students and scholars and by translating the important historical works of economics into English.

This research project demonstrates the ways in which fact and value are entangled in economic concepts and the implications of this entanglement for the ways in which various economic problems are approached.

This research project reinterprets the events causing the British Industrial Revolution by showing that the Glorious Revolution of 1688-1689 was significant in causing the divergence of political institutions which led to the divergence of economic institutions and policy.

This research project focuses on the effect of the technological changes that led to the British Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century on the market for skilled workers.

This research project investigates the influence of economic doctrines on policy norms in recent decades through analysis of the history of the Nobel Prize in Economics.

This research project explores and documents the development of graduate economics training in the leading centers of doctoral education in the United States.

This research project uncovers the economic forces which reshaped the evolution of the imperial examination system in traditional China, using a new dataset from archival sources of ancient Chinese Books.

This research project offers a radical reconsideration of the centrality of the Corn Returns to the development of classical liberal political economy and shows how much the Corn Laws enriched agrarian interests and how their repeal represented a boost to British manufacturing.

This research project examines how US military needs during World War II and the Cold War steered engineers and applied mathematicians to an economic way of thinking about scarce resources, including limited computational resources, and how economists subsequently incorporated that into mathematics.

This research project documents long-run trends in personal bankruptcy, with special emphasis on the use of the bankruptcy law at the local level and among women.

This research project examines the value of political connections between corporate groups in Italy and the National Fascist Party (PNF) during the years of Mussolini’s rise to power (1921-1929).

This research project explores the factors producing “herding” in the economics profession and professional investment community with the goal of articulating policy changes appropriate to the organization of the economics profession and its practices in particular.

This research project recounts the intellectual history of the dollar as an international reserve currency, starting with World War I, which brought the international gold standard to an end, and continuing all the way up to the present global financial crisis.

This research project develops a much better understanding of Paul Samuelson’s life, work, and broader political-economic vision through archival research at Duke University’s Paul Samuelson archives.

The Institute for New Economic Thinking convened many of the world’s most distinguished economists, academics and thought leaders at its inaugural Conference at King’s College, University of Cambridge.

The Institute for New Economic Thinking held its annual plenary conference in Hong Kong from April 4-7, 2013 at the InterContinental Hotel in Kowloon. The event discussed Asia’s emergence in the global economy and other core issues.

The Institute for New Economic Thinking joined the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) in holding its fifth Annual Conference from April 10 to April 12, 2014 in Toronto.

Join us for a reception at the ASSA conference in San Francisco

A reference guide to all Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) community presentations at the Eastern Economic Association’s (EEA) 2017 annual meeting

The History Project will hold its fifth conference on May 11-12, 2017 at the University of Cambridge. The conference will be concerned with the economic history of India, particularly in relation to exchanges across frontiers, the history of the law, and the history of economic thought.

Shaped by the 2008 financial crisis, a new generation of economists is expanding the boundaries of economic thinking on credit cycles, private debt, and financial stability.

New approaches are being developed, but efforts are fragmented and need to be brought together if we hope to piece together a paradigm. 

The YSI Economic History Working Group and the YSI Financial Stability Working Group are hosting a webinar series on the “Institutional Responses to Financial Crises, 1870 to 2017”. 

The Institute of New Economic Thinking Young Scholars Initiative (INET YSI) Working Group on the History of Economic Thought is organizing a YSI Workshop on Methods in the History of Economic Thought on 17 May in Antwerp, Belgium, ahead of the Annual ESHET Conference.

This study group aims to reflect on international economic growth, sustainable development and the evolution of economic thinking around capitalism and enterprise through the analysis of a selected multidisciplinary bibliography.

A Speaker Series for the Greater Philadelphia Region

The YSI Economics of Innovation Working Group in partnership with the Ragnar Nurkse Department of Innovation and Governance, Tallinn University of Technology is hosting a YSI Conference on “Innovation, Institutions and Governance”.

The Economic History Working Group and the Financial Stability Working Group are organizing a two day seminar on May, 12th-13th in New York. The theme for the will be “Institutional responses to financial crises 1870 to 2017”.

Workshop of the YSI Africa Working Group 

The Young Scholars Initiative and its working groups will be hosting meetings and discussions in and around the 2017 Trento Festival of Economics. 

The YSI Latin America Working Group is hosting a workshop at the United Nations ECLAC Summer School on Latin American economies.

The Festival for New Economic Thinking is a collaborative initiative of several organizations, and aims to bring together those who seek to improve how economics is taught, studied and practiced. 

The Institute of New Economic Thinking Young Scholars Initiative (INET YSI) Working Group on the History of Economic Thought is organizing a YSI Workshop on Institutions and Communities in the History of Economic Thought on 6 June in Madrid, Spain, ahead of the Annual ESHET Conference

The Institute of New Economic Thinking Young Scholars Initiative (INET YSI) Working Group on the History of Economic Thought is organizing a YSI Workshop on Institutions and Communities in the History of Economic Thought on 6 June in Madrid, Spain, ahead of the Annual ESHET Conference.

Young Scholars based in Latin America are invited to convene in Buenos Aires. The event serves to strengthen the Latin American network of new economic thinkers pursuing a new economic paradigm. Attendees will be able to enjoy several partner events during the same week.

As in previous years, young scholars will come together in Trento during the annual Festival dell’Economia. This gathering will serve as the YSI Europe Convening for 2018. Attendees will have the opportunity to share their work with YSI members from across Europe, while also partaking in the Festival dell’Economia. 

Young Scholars based in Africa are invited to convene in Harare, Zimbabwe. The event serves to strengthen the African network of new economic thinkers pursuing a new economic paradigm. Attendees will be able to attend the annual conference of the Zimbabwe Historical Association in the same trip.

The YSI Economic History Working Group invites scholars to submit their research on alternative perspectives and different approaches to the study of economic history. The workshop will take place on 29 July, 2018, in Boston, Massachusetts, preceding the World Economic History Congress (29 July  - 3 August).

INET gathered hundreds of new economic thinkers in Edinburgh to discuss the past, present, and future of the economics profession.

The Institute joined the Centre for International Governance Innovation, and the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change in hosting its third-annual plenary conference in Berlin from April 12-15, 2012.

The Institute for New Economic Thinking held its sixth Annual Conference from April 8 to April 11, 2015, in collaboration with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris.

The History of Economic Thought and the Philosophy of Economics working groups are organising a Young Scholars Workshop on the methods and approaches to the history of economics that have consolidated during the last two decades.  

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A discussion of new economic thinking over the years at Cambridge, and its recent contributions via the Cambridge-INET Institute

Adam Smith and his contemporaries were key figures of the Scottish enlightenment. How much of his real thought survives in modern economics, and has something important been lost?

What Do Citations Actually Measure in Economics and How Should Economic Journals and Department Review Committees Use This Data? 

Rob Johnson kicks off INET’s “Reawakening” conference with his take on how economists can win back the trust of a world that has rejected experts