The History of Economic Thought Working Group is devoted to disinterring the roots of contemporary economic orthodoxy, exhuming time-honoured rival approaches, and imagining possible futures.

What were the great controversies in economic thought, and how were they settled (or were they ever, really)? What different answers did diverse schools of thought give (and often continue to give) to the same questions? What different questions did they ask? What is the story of the current orthodoxy and why does it have the power that it has? How do other traditions in economics and beyond differ? It is only through a robust understanding of our intellectual history that we can both properly comprehend present-day economics and have a sense of what viable alternatives to the current order might exist. To further the existence of a community of scholars devoted to this important endeavour, the Working Group hosts seminars and other events exploring the wide array of topics pertaining to the history of economic thought.

Members of the Working Group are encouraged to use it as a way of building professional and intellectual networks that can help them advance their own careers, find others to critically engage with their work, and foster the exchange of ideas on this topic on a larger scale.

Previous projects

• November 19, 2019: Pre-ALAHPE workshop Women in the history of Latin American economics.
• June 19, 2019: Pre-HES workshop on writing for new audiences, led by Tiago Mata (UCL) and Paul Dudenhefer (Duke University).
• May 22, 2019: Pre-ESHET workshop Interdependencies, causation, and synergies between economic history and history of economics, led by Marc Flandreau (U. Pennsylvania) and Carolyn Biltoft (Graduate Institute, Geneva).
• History of science webinar series.
• Study group on feminist epistemology.