The historian of economics encounters special difficulties in dealing with a heterodox economist. When one considers someone who is orthodox, basic notions can be taken for granted, and this enables the historian to zero in on meaningful issues without first having to provide an extensive introduction dealing with fundamental notions which have to be understood if the significance of what is being said is to be grasped. On the other hand, if one omits this step when dealing with the heterodox the analysis is not likely to be very meaningful. This special difficulty is much compounded where the heterodoxy is methodological, as it is with Wesley Clair Mitchell. What Mitchell tried to do was to reconstruct economics, to convince economists to adopt a different approach to the very way they conduct their inquiries. John Stuart Mill had laid down the law that extensive observation of specific experience was of no help in the attempt to derive economic theory, and mainstream economists generally went along with him on this. Mitchell disagreed and attempted to show that by building on different foundations a more “scientific” and useful economics could be derived. The interesting question for the historian of economics is: What can we learn from Mitchell's experience? It is here that we run into the problem that I noted at the outset.

Facts, the historian E.H. Carr argued, are like fish in a vast ocean: what one catches to a large extent depends on where one chooses to fish and on the kind of tackle one uses. Professor Paul Samuelson has offered (HES Bulletin, Fall 1987) a prescription for stimulating demand for history of economics. He proposes “that history of economics more purposefully reorient itself toward studying the past from the standpoint of the present state of economic science. To use a pejorative term unpejoratively, I am suggesting Whig Economic History of Economic Analysis.” (Samuelson 1987: 52) Samuelson promises that fishing with the tackle of present-day theory will catch commercially attractive historical fish and illustrates this approach with his own work in history of economics.

By the time Joseph A. Schumpeter was well into the writing of his History of Economic Analysis. that is, in the late 1940's, shortly before his death, Paul A. Samuelson was already well known in the higher circles of the profession for his precocity and brilliance.2 But, if later his impact on the discipline was to be ceremonialized, and quite accurately as such appelations go, as the Age of Samuelson, was this dimly if at all anticipated by Schumpeter when he wrote the History? How did Schumpeter treat Samuelson therein and was it different from his treatment of other contemporary economists, such as Milton Friedman, John R. Hicks, Oscar Lange, Abba Lerner, Franco Modigliani, and George Stigler, all of whom, for example, figure in the History?

I was motivated to consider the topics of this paper by repeatedly encountering the same problems in pondering the history of economic thought, not only in my own work but when retereeing papers and reading the publications of others. The problems that I will consider are important because they involve fundamental issues in the selections and representations we make of the history of economic thought. I do not have solutions for all of the problems, nor do I believe that each of them has a single solution. My objective in this address is not precisely to solve the problems, although I will suggest some ways of dealing with some of them. My purpose rather is to identify the problems in a clear way and to review how they have been treated in order to provide a common basis for further discussion. They can be divided into technical problems and problems of approach.

The subject of economics is characterised by deep divisions over methodology, theory and practical implications. This paper addresses itself to these divisions with the aim of suggesting a way forward. The starting point is the proposition that one of the keys to the problem is for economists to be more aware of the simple, but often tacit, ideas which underlie economic theory, especially the ideas which economists tend to have on the nature and status of their theories. It is an approach which is developed more fully in A Theory of the Capitalist Economy: Towards a Post-Classical Synthesis (Gerrard, forthcoming). This present paper offers a short exposition of some of thearguments in favor of a post-classical approach.

Keynes' Treatise on Money was used to describe his ideas on the credit market. This was the market where equilibrium determines the rate of interest. The supply of credit, or loanable funds, was set equal to the demand for credit; variations in the interest rate were explained by shifts in these functions. Most of Keynes' early interest theories were short run; they were developed in relation to his theory of the credit cycle; he was attempting to explain why the interest rate would vary during a “slump” or an “expansion” of the economy. Some of Keynes' interest theory was also developed in relation to his attempt to rationalize Gibson's Paradox (GP), that prices and interest rates move in the same direction over time. This was Keynes' long run theory of interest.

This investigation reveals certain modifications and extensions pertaining primarily to the disintegration of the social fabric of capitalist society developed by Schumpeter, with special emphasis on his writings between the years 1942 and 1949, just prior to his death in 1950. Three publications during the period which hold particular significance are Prime and Henderson (1975), “Schumpeter on Preserving Private Enterprise” (an address by Schumpeter to a group of Quebec businessmen in November 1945); J.A. Schumpeter, “The March into Socialism,” AER, May 1950 (a paper presented on December 30, 1949); and J.A. Schumpeter, notes on “American Institutions and Economic Progress,” (late 1949). These more recent views are exposed and compared with Galbraith's rationalizations on the contemporary corporate economy. It is well known that Schumpeter, the theorist, was willing to express tendencies but was hesitant to relate the specific outcome of the future of capitalism. However, Galbraith was quite precise in his interpretation of the transition to modern capitalism.

This essay examines Frank Knight's view of monopolies in a market economy through an exegesis of his writings. A cogent development of Frank Knight's theory of monopolies is conspicuously absent in the economic literature. His prominence in the discipline and the influence his work has had on others establish his views as significant in the intellectural history of the theory of capitalist competition. The study focuses on Knight's characterization of monopolies and his views as to the appropriateness of coercive repressive regulatory policies. Also, capitalistic monopolies are discussed in the context of Knight's critical attitude toward economic and philosophic dogma and his disdain for centralized economic planning. The following section deals with the Knightian view of the nature of monopolies and categorization of types of monopolies. Then, the philosophical basis for Knight's position onmonopolies is presented. Specifically, the concentration of economic power in capitalism is explained in terms of Knight's perceptions of social reformers, static equilibrium analysis, and economic planning.

The following short, but densely packed paper by Professor Shohken Mawatari is the first in a series to be published at irregular intervals in the H.E.S. Bulletin. And if this inaugural contribution is anything to go by, the result will be a substantial and valuable addition to our knowledge of the contemporary state of economics in a variety of countries. Moreover, it may be especially enlightening for American and British readers, who all too often take it for granted that the economic ideas and practices prevailing in their own countries constitute the norm, if not the ideal to which professional economists elsewhere should aspire.

So true is it that, in science as elsewhere, we fight for and against not men and things as they are, but for and against the caricatures we make of them.

(Schumpeter, 1954, p. 90)

Over thirty years ago, Bronfenbrenner characterized Japanese economics in terms of “sectarianism, inbreeding and schizophrenia” (1956, p. 390). This paper explores the validity of these characterizations in relation to the contemporary Japanese scene. The main focus will be an institutional analysis of academic economics as conducted within the Japanese university system.

Last January I received my four volume set of the New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. As has been said, it really is not a dictionary but an encyclopedia. Many of the entries bring the reader up to date on the latest advances in economic theory. But “over 700 of the nearly 2000 entries” are on the lives and works of important economists who either have passed away or “have reached the age of seventy by 1 January 1986” (I. ix). Even the theoretical entries often contain a history of the subject, and many subjects would be classified as history of economic thought entries. (See the Subject Index. IV. 980-988.)