Over the past 2 years, I have written some tweetstorms or threads on such and such history of economics topics. I used to list them on an apps that has recently closed, so here is a list (click on pictures or the links and scroll down to read the whole thread).
I sometimes write tweetstorms to articulate some ideas or test the narrative structure of a paper that I’m writing, or to draw attention to a paper or a book I enjoyed, or more often, to bundle a series of pieces by historians of economics. These tweetstorms are therefore often filled with links to seminal work by economists and to recent contributions by historians, and can be used as reading lists.
Teaching the History of Economics through debates (a series)
The syllabus and some thoughts on a history of economics course I taught in the Spring of 2019 are here, but here’s the list of the five questions economists (and students) have long debated:
- Is Economics too mathematized (tweetstorm)
- Theory or data first? (tweetstorm)
- Are economic agent rational? (tweetstorm)
- Should economic models be realistic?(tweestorm)
- Is economics ideological? (tweetstorm)
Economic fields and research programs
A History of urban economics (based on an article I wrote with Anthony Rebours)
A history of environmental economics
On the uses of contingent valuation in the Exxon-Valdez case:
A socio-history of climate Economics (based on a recent dissertation by Pauline Huet)
Economists petitioning for climate
On the field of Agricultural Economics (with tons of reading suggestions in the comments)
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Economics science, expertise, and ideology
How economists have discussed ideology throughout the XXth century
Is economics a science? (and is it a good question?)
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Histories of tools & data
A history of the mathematization of economics
A history of econometrics and empirical economics
two reading lists on the making of economic facts (see also this blogpost)
One with a lot of suggestions in the comments:
And a second one here:
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Histories of theories
Time for some game theory!
A century of economics and engineering at Stanford (based on this paper with Aurélien Saïdi)
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Histories of Macroeconomics
The Legacy of Lucas’s 1972 paper “Expectations and the Neutrality of Money”
The Lucas Critique weaponized
A history of economic analysis at the Bank of England
A history of economic analysis at the Fed (based on a paper with Juan Acosta)
The making and dissemination of Milton Friedman’s 1968 presidential address, which introduced the idea of a natural rate of unemployment (based on a post with Aurélien Goutsmedt)
History of rational expectations reading list
Minneapolis Fed presidents and the macroeconomists who advised them
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The wild lives of economists
The most exhilarating life I know is that or Japanese growth theorist Hiro Uzawa
The most inscrutable economist is Kenneth Arrow
Few know, however, that Arrow had a rough start. Completing his dissertation was a tough process
How Frank Hahn viewed the future of economics in 1991
On the relationship between Solow and Robinson
Friedman’s view of the future of economics in 1991
and his methodological legacy
Samuelson’s undergraduate years at Chicago (based on the first chapters of Roger Backhouse’s biography)
A few references on Thomas Schelling,
On William Baumol’s vision of science
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Women in economics
On Marion Crawfurd, Paul Samuelson’s wife
Was Samuelson sexist?
The issue was so tricky and interesting that Roger Backhouse and I wrote a whole paper on the topic. Here’s a tweetstorm summarizing our arguments.
I have tweetstormed a lot about economics’ current gender reckoning (the seed in the summer of 2017, the rise at ASSA 2018, taking stock at ASSA 2019 ), and as well as about the (largely forgotten) first gender reckoning that female economists launched in the 1970s.
This tweetstorm has become a blog post
as well as this recent one on economists petitioning in favor of the Equal Rights Amendment at ASSA Atlanta in 1979 (blog with Cleo Chassonnery-Zaigouche and John Singleton)
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Institutions
A history of the John Bates Clark medal (based on this paper with Andrej Svorencik)
Samuelson on Nobels
On the history of peer-reviewing (in science and economics)
What economists would learn should they publish history of economic pieces in their journal anniversary issues
Varia
Why 1952 is the most important year in the history of economics:
On the origins of the French tradition of inequality and public economic research
The Undercover Historian 