From Roger Sandilands, Gavin Kennedy, and Harro Maas.
___________
Dear Dr Brett,
I wish to be associated with the excellent message sent to you today by Sandra Peart and others.
In my own work as an academic and as a policy adviser in the fields of trade and development, I draw upon the history of economic thought all the time.
As one example, next April I shall be giving an invited paper at Duke University on Allyn Young's concept of macroeconomic increasing returns (recently popularised by James Buchanan) at a conference, attended by Robert Solow, on the contemporary relevance of the neoclassical Solow model. The late Xioakai Yang, at Monash University, was also steeped in the ideas of Adam Smith and Allyn Young, and his ideas are finding practical relevance to Chinese economic policy through one of his students who currently works in the Prime Minister's office in Beijing and at Renmin University where I worked with him for a few weeks this summer.
A second example: David Laidler and I have recently demonstrated the contemporary relevance, for understanding the current growth stagnation in Japan, of the work of Lauchlin Currie (1902-93) and Ralph Hawtrey on the Great Depression. Here, the difference between the Keynesian liquidity trap and Hawtreyan credit deadlock concepts has proven very illuminating. You should also ask Ben Bernanke how his ideas on monetary control have been informed by his study of Currie's work at Harvard in the early 1930s on the real bills doctrine.
Sincerely,
Roger Sandilands
Professor of Economics
University of Strathclyde
Glasgow UK
___________
September 6, 2007
Dr. David Brett
Australian Bureau of Statistics
Dear Dr. Brett,
I have appended my name to the letter from the President of the
History of Economics Society, copied below.
Let me make a single point of relevance to the history of economic
theory to today's research in economics related to policy issues of
immediate and pressing concern.
I refer to the causes of economic growth, of desperate interest to
everyone affected by it in the poorer countries and the richer
countries. The area that attracts my research effort is in trying to
untangle the causes of growth from the 15th century to the 18th
century. How did Britain, a tiny island off the continent of Eruope
reach growth trajectories that lifted its population within a hundred
years from 1750 to 1850 (during which it founded the New Sotuh Wales
Penal Colony of relevant effect on the activities of your Bureau) to
a continuing rise in per capital incomes across its population?
What follows from this research is what is not happening in poorer
countries, many not growing at all) that did happen in Britain (and
other European countries, including the USA) that is replicable today
in these countries?
That is an example of the work that your pending decision to shift it
to an item in history, archeology, religion(!) and philosophy.
Economic growth for poor countries is not a contemplative subject; it
is, I submit, a scientific venture of immediate relevance.
Please re-consider your decision.
Yours sincerely
Gavin Kennedy
Emeritus Professor
Heriot-Watt University
Edinburgh
Scotland
UK
_____________
Dear Dr. Bratt,
Following up on the letter sent to you by the president-elect of my professional society, prof. Sandra Peart, I would like to express my personal worries about present considerations to relocate "economic history" and "history of economic thought" to the "history, archeology, religion and philosophy" category of the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Some years ago I was invited by the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney to give the key note address on a seminar organised to the occasion of the opening of an exhibition devoted to the work of one of the greatest economists with strong ties to Australia, Stanley Jevons. The evening before that seminar was held there was an opening buffet in the Powerhouse Museum that was attended, amongst others, by the president of the Central Bank of Australia, and many others. I happened to be seated next to him and it was a great pleasure to have had a conversation with an important working economist who not only showed great interest in this particular exhibition, but who also was clearly very knowledgeable about the history of his field.
On that evening Ian Castles, an important former statistician of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, held a lovely speech from which I would like to quote. Ian Castles told us about his experiences with a British economist who visited Sydney for a conference organised at the Reserve Bank in the early 1990s. Accompanying him for a walk during a luncheon break, Castles pointed to the former building of the Royal Mint where Stanley Jevons had worked. Castles told us that his companion's
"initial reaction was one of disbelief. So we crossed the road and spent a few minutes in the building known as the Mint Museum, which at the time was part of the Powerhouse Museum. To my satisfaction, we were able to confirm immediately that Jevons had indeed worked at the Mint. But to my consternation, and that of my economist colleague, the captions to the display revealed nothing about who Jevons was or what he had done."
Of course the evening banquet at the Powerhouse was a moment of triumph for Castles because by then the Powerhouse Museum had clearly recognized the importance of Stanley Jevons as an economist, and as one of the important polymaths of the century.
In my view a relocation of "economic history" and "history of economic thought" equals the sorry state of affairs in which the work of one of the most important Australian economist was not valued to its worth. For this reason I seriously urge you to reconsider this proposal.
To my knowledge parts of the Jevons' exhibition are still on display at the Powerhouse. May I make a bold suggestion: please use one of your own luncheon breaks to visit this small exhibition. It may well help you to change your mind.
Yours Sincerely,
Dr. Harro Maas
Dept. of Economics, Room E9.09
University of Amsterdam
Roetersstraat 11
1018 WB Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Tel: 00 31 20 525 4263
Fax: 00 31 20 525 4254
email: H.B.J.B.Maas@uva.nl
http://www1.fee.uva.nl/pp/hmaas/ <http://www1.fee.uva.nl/pp/hmaas/>
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Posted by: sfvqjkao kaut | April 25, 2008 at 03:53 PM