sidney

What Use Is Economic History?

It is important to understand that academically speaking there is a civil war within the community divided across the Atlantic. The English variation of the theme is to house the economic historians in the history department thus freeing them from the shackles of the prevailing preferred economic models that would be imposed if housed within an economics department. Whereas in the USA the economic historians are typically housed within the economics departments and have had to force their students to back up such models as EMH, CAPM, Modern portfolio theory etc. based on rational behavior, perfect information, and normal behavior in markets etc. Within the USA there were a few excpeptions to this split betwee England and USA. Yale's history department stood out most as one that continued to house the economic historians within. Occasionally students of the Yale school such as Dennis M. P. McCarthy(Iowa State University) would land tenure in history departments outside of Yale and thus the Yale model would germinate outside occasionally. Dr. McCarthy is now emerits so no doubt Iowa State University opted to bring the next economic historians back into the economics department. THE MOST important classes I have EVER taken with respect to my appreciation of the big picture understanding of finance in economics were in fact tought by Dr. McCarthy; no offense to my economcs professors at ISU but DMPM was not limited in respect to reviewing real events by the models I was being tought in my economics classes. Instead he typically used multi-factor models discussing the signficance of the various fators on the economic growth(or decline) and comparing and contrasting the various economic history of cultures over time and places. I was somewhat naive in thinking I would be able to pursue economic history within a history department beyond the towers of ISU but much to my surprise I found the EH shackled by the economics department in the USA. I did not want to become a pseudo math PHD spouting out endless papers applying calculus to the review of economic data. Calculus has ruined economics in the sense that it could not handle the fractal relationships that an economic historian is free to observe, describe, and draw conclusions from. Instead Chaos theory, complexity theory, fuzzy logic should have been the basis upon which economics departments should have drawn upon thus linking up a typical qualitative approach of economic historians with the quantitative approach of economic study.