Adam Smith Lives!

HOPE conference announcement

The annual /History of Political Economy/ Conference -- this year on the topic "Robert Solow and the Development of Growth Economics" -- will be held 25-27 April 2008 at Duke University.  Further information, including the tentative program, can be found on the Duke History of Economy Group website (http://econ.duke.edu/HOPE), following the links to HOPE Conferences and then to the 2008 conference or, directly, to the HOPE 2008 website
http://econ.duke.edu/HOPE/HOPEconference2008OpenAccess/HOPE2008master.htm

Mauro Boianovsky <mboianovsky@gmail.com>
Kevin Hoover <kd.hoover@duke.edu>
    Organizers

Conferences in the History of Economics

3 conference announcements of interest to historians of economics have come in recently:

1  )from Steve Medema) The 40th annual UK History of Economic Thought
Conference will be held at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, over 3-5 September,
2008. The conference will retain its traditional intimate format, with substantial
time devoted to the presentation and discussion of each of the papers.
Papers on all aspects of the history of economics and economic thought
are welcome. Those wishing to present a paper at the conference should
send an abstract of five hundred words to the conference organizer,
Professor Steven Medema, by email at steven.medema@cudenver.edu or via
the post to Department of Economics, CB 181, University of Colorado
Denver, Denver, CO 80217-3364, USA. The deadline for receipt of
proposals is April 1, 2008, and decisions will be made by April 15,
2008. Further information about the conference will be made available in
the coming months.
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2  (from David Teira Serrano) XI Summer School on Economics and Philosophy: SOCIAL NORMS

San Sebastian (Spain), 14-17 July 2008;   Director: Cristina Bicchieri (UPenn)
Coordinators: Alfonso Dubois (UPV), David Teira & Jesús Zamora (UNED)

Preliminary list of speakers: Jason Alexander (LSE), Daniel Andler (Paris
IV-ENS), Cristina Bicchieri (UPenn), Pablo Brañas (Ugr), Jordi Brandts
(CSIC), Cristiano Castelfranchi (ISTC-  CNR), Jason Dana (UPenn), Jon
Elster (College de France), Diego Gambetta (Oxford), Herbert Gintis
(UMass), Russell Hardin (NYU), Shaun Nichols (U. Arizona), Edna
Ullmann-Margalit (Tel-Aviv)

Since 1998 the Urrutia Elejalde has annually organized a Summer School on
frontier topics between philosophy,  economics and other social sciences,
bringing together scholars from all these fields to explore them. The aim
of this year Summer School is to introduce participants to the vast
research that is taking place in the area of  social norms. >From
philosophy and psychology to evolutionary game theory and experimental
economics, recent work on social norms is shedding light on why and under
what circumstances people engage in pro-social behavior, and how norms may
emerge, stabilize or decay.

We encourage submission of papers that cover one or more of the above
areas. The scientific committee will consider a number of submissions by
young scholars at graduate or postgraduate level. The Foundation will
cover the registration fees and accomodation expenses of the authors.

Please send a 2000 words pdf abstract to David Teira (dteira [at]
fsof.uned.es) before Jan 31st 2008. A decision will be made by March 15th.

For further information on the School, visit:
http://www.urrutiaelejalde.org/SummerSchool/2008.html
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3  (from Pedro Duarte)  The New Zealand Association of Economists and the Econometric Society will hold
a symposium (in New Zealand, July 2008) on the Phillips Curve. The selected
papers will be published in the North American Journal of Economics and
Finance. Although the main concern of the symposium is with "the estimation,
inference, and policy implications of the Phillips Curve, and its place in
macroeconomic analysis," the 50th anniversary of Phillips' original article
opens up the possibility that some historian of economics participate in the
symposium and reach a broader audience of macroeconomists. For more details on
this symposium, please visit:

http://www.phillips08.org.nz/

Rawls on Robbins

Here's a taste of what David will talk about at the Robbins conference in London.  We've obtained a number of Rawls' copies of books by economists, including Rawls' copy of The Nature and Significance.  So we can see what struck Rawls as he read Robbins. Here, you can see Rawls' exclamation -- "splendid!" -- beside Robbins' discussion of interpersonal comparisons of utility:

Nature and Significance: Robbins at 75

The Robbins conference website is now set to go! 
http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/_new/events/lionelrobbins/conferenceprogramme.asp

Lionel Robbins, Nature and Significance of Economic Science

Readers know that I studied with Sam Hollander.  Perhaps because of this, I have long felt that Sam's teacher, Lionel Robbins, deserves more recognition than he has been given by the profession.  So I am very pleased that N&S is now 75 years old; we can use the occasion to celebrate Robbins and to sort out just what he said that was so important. Frank Cowell and Amos Witztum have sent the HES list this announcement of the upcoming Robbins conference at the London School of Economics.   

A Conference on

The Nature And Significance of Economic Science

75th Anniversary of Lionel Robbins’s Essay. This year marks the 75th anniversary of Lionel Robbins’s Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science. The Department of Economics at LSE and the editors of Economica are marking the event by a conference and a special issue of the journal. The purpose of this conference is to renew the considerations of Robbins’s theme and reflect on the current nature and significance of economic science as well as examine Robbins’s own position from a historical perspective.

Speakers include: Tony Atkinson, Ken Binmore, Lawrence Blume, RichardLipsey and Robert Sugden

The Conference will take place at LSE on 10-11 December 2007.

There are no conference fees. Participation includes luncheon on bothdays of the conference and a conference dinner on Monday, 10/12.However, there are a limited number of places and registration is on the basis of first come first served.

You can obtain your registration form and examine the programme of the conference at:

http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/_new/events/lionelrobbins/

Leo Thorsness -- modern day hero

Yesterday we took Colonel Leo Thorsness, leader in Residence at the Jepson School of Leadership Studies, to the airport.  Before this, he spent 2 1/2 days with our faculty and students -- talking to newly admitted Jepson students about his days in Hanoi Hilton, to students in our Foundations classes, ethics, and Don Forsyth's Group Dynamics class, and so on.  Lunch with ROTC students at UR; pizza with Richmond College men.  Dinner for our Jepson Forum event, Ronald Takaki. 

Throughout, Colonel Thorsness' message is courage, "do what's right, help others", and -- here the leadership lesson emerges -- people will follow you if you this is your mantra.  If it's not, they won't.  He told us about how the men at Hanoi Hilton stripped the leader -- ranking officer -- of his rank because he had given up on this motivational mantra and become a broken man.

Is there a link to HET?  Economists today rarely talk about the motivational force that a good leader generates.  But Adam Smith knew about such things.   In a paper I presented at the International Leadership Association 2 weeks ago, David Levy and I made the case that, for Smith, the approbation that comes from "doing the right thing", being praiseworthy, motivates leaders and then their followers.
Here's a key passage that makes the case that a leader, motivated by equality, was able to command a rather large number of supporters at Culloden.  My grandmother was a MacLean (of Duart); David's a Cameron.   Here's what Smith has to say about leadership:

It is not thirty years ago since Mr. Cameron of Lochiel, a gentleman of Lochabar in Scotland, without any legal warrant whatever, not being what was then called a lord of regality, nor even a tenant in chief, but a vassal of the Duke of Argyle, and without being so much as a justice of peace, used, notwithstanding, to exercise the highest criminal jurisdiction over his own people. He is said to have done so with great equity, though without any of the formalities of justice; and it is not improbable that the state of that part of the country at that time made it necessary for him to assume this authority in order to maintain the public peace. That gentleman, whose rent never exceeded five hundred pounds a year, carried, in 1745, eight hundred of his own people into the rebellion with him. (Smith WN: B.III, Ch.4).

HE position at James Madison

Barkley Rosser, at JMU, has posted this note at the HES list:

I am pleased to announce that there is a tenure track, assistant professor job opening availableat James Madison University, for which the primary field desired is history of economics, with other fields with that being anything (although we are also hiring in public economics separately).  We are looking for somebody interested in teaching history of economic though on about an annual basis. 

If you or somebody you know might be interested, please check out our ad in the October JOE, or contact Prof. Ehsan Ahmed at ahmedex@jmu.edu.  We will be interviewing at the ASSA meetings in New Orleans, and the deadline for applications is December 1.

Eugenics resurfaces

David Levy and I recently wrote this in the wake of James Watson's recent resignation:

Watson’s remarks call to mind debates in the 19th Century over Ireland and the West Indies. There, too, the debate centered on the seemingly simple question of whether the Irish (or the former slaves in Jamaica) were as intelligent as the English. In “What is to be Done with Ireland” and other articles, the philosopher and political economist John Stuart Mill argued that the Irish were inherently no different from the English. The soon-to-be forgotten co-founder of eugenics, W. R. Greg, argued that the Irish were inherently different, “idiosyncratic.” For Greg, different meant inferior.

 

On the policy side, the debate fits with Watson’s statement as well — if the Irish were inferior to the English, then English social and economic policy wouldn’t work there. Something else had to be devised.

 

Eugenics was one answer that gained currency for well over a century. Not surprisingly, Watson has also come out in favor of eugenics.

Though we don't say this in the article (see the link below), it is interesting to note that Watson's reputation apparently survived his earlier remarks on eugenics. 

You can see the full article from the Providence Journal Bulletin, here.

History of recent economics, mechanism design, etc.

The recent Nobel set off a flurry of remarks to which I don't hope to add.  But I should say that it also prompted a note to me from Kyu Sang Lee, former Young Scholar at the HES and participant in the Summer Institute at George Mason University.  Not surprisingly, given his interest in the history of recent economics, Kyu earned his PhD from Notre Dame University under Phil Mirowski.  He reminds me that his 2006 HOPE article is an attempt to write a history of design mechanism:

Mechanism Design Theory Embodying an Algorithm-Centered Vision
of Markets/Organizations/Institutions
Kyu Sang Lee

This article examines mechanism design theory (MDT), which has recently
garnered widespread attention in the microeconomics literature. The main
conclusion drawn here is that MDT provides the dominant Walrasian general
equilibrium tradition with a new transpersonal, algorithm-centered
vision of markets/organizations/institutions while leaving unsolved the lingering
problems associated with that tradition, many of which were plainly
revealed by the Sonnenschein-Mantel-Debreu (SMD) results (Ingrao and
Israel 1990, chaps. 11, 12; Rizvi 1994).

The study of recent economics has now engaged enough historians of economic thought that a new group has emerged along with a new set of conferences, the first of which was held at Nanterre, last June. You can find out more by checking their website:  HESREC.  I like old and dusty books -- this week I enjoyed re-reading some Mandeville -- but the new stuff, in my mind, is like a breath of fresh air in a sub-discipline that can sometimes be so far removed from the present that it ceases to overlap sufficiently with what economists know, today. 

HES line up for Allied Social Sciences Association annual meeting

Perry Mehrling has lined up a terrific set of sessions for the ASSAs.  If you're going, check these out.  The ASSAs allocate sessions and pay attention to attendance (someone counts!) so we need a good turn out for all.  Last year, there were people standing in the doorway and sitting on the floor for the HES session on Chicago-style economics! 

Also (another reminder later):  the HES will host a reception for those interested in talking about teaching or research in the history of economic ideas.  Friday.  6:30-8:3 p.m.  Room tba. Plan to attend and meet up with some like-minded types.
_______________
The History of Economics Society is sponsoring the following sessions at the 2008 ASSA meetings in New Orleans.
Jan. 4, 10:15 am
HES/AFA

What Was/Is Financial Economics? (B2)

Presiding: STEPHEN BUSER, Ohio State University

GEOFFREY POITRAS, Simon Fraser University, and FRANCK JOVANOVIC, University of Quebec-Montreal--Pioneers of Financial Economics

HICHEM BEN-EL-MECHAIEKH and ROBERT DIMAND, Brock University--Louis Bachelier's 1938 Volume on the Calculus of Speculation: Efficient Markets and Mathematical Finance in Bachelier's Later Work

PETER BERNSTEIN, Peter L. Bernstein, Inc.--In the Thick of This World: The True Story of Modern Finance

PERRY MEHRLING, Barnard College, Columbia University--The Spirit of Finance and the Development of Macroeconomics


Jan. 4, 12:30 pm
HES

Keeping the Faith: The Continuing Engagement of Economics with Religion (B1)

Presiding: SPENCER BANZHAF, Georgia State University

STEPHEN MEARDON, Bowling Green State University--Whence Commerce Followed the Missionary: Religions Origins of Doctrines of U.S. Trade and Expansion

HARRO MAAS, Amsterdam School of Economics--A Hard Battle to Fight: The Dismal Science in Cambridge 1820-1850

DANIELA PARISI, Catholic University of Milan--Economics to the Service of Humankind: The Political Economy of Francesco Vito

Discussants: BRAD BATEMAN, Grinnell College
PAUL OSLINGTON, University of New South Wales
SPENCER BANZHAF, Georgia State University


Jan. 5, 10:15 am
HES/AFEE

Thorstein Veblen at 150: Rethinking a Survivor (B1)

Presiding: ANNE MAYHEW, University of Tennessee

MATTHEW WILSON, University of Denver--Veblen on Veblen: Social Critic, Evolutionary Scientist, or Both?

ROBERT PRASCH, Middlebury College--Thorstein Veblen's Theory of Consumption

ERIC HAKE, Eastern Illinois University--Thorstein Veblen's Theory of Business Enterprise, Business Cycles, and Industrial Organization

Discussants: MALCOLM RUTHERFORD, University of British Columbia
JANET KNOEDLER, Bucknell University


Jan. 5, 2:30 pm
HES

Rawls and the Economists (B3)

Presiding: SANDRA PEART, University of Richmond

SANDRA PEART, University of Richmond, and DAVID LEVY, George Mason University--The Buchanan-Rawls Correspondence

JOHN DAVIS, Marquette University and University of Amsterdam--Rawls and Sen on Deliberative Democracy

JOE PERSKY, University of Illinois-Chicago--Rawls' Thin Defense of Property

Discussants: STEVEN DURLAUF, University of Wisconsin
DAVID COLANDER, Middlebury Coll