Scholarly Comments on Academic Economics

Volume 16, Issue 2, September 2019

In this issue:

Let facts be submitted to a candid world: Ron Michener explains the role of monetary affairs in the hardships that helped to justify the rebellion of the American colonies, and criticizes Farley Grubb’s Journal of Economic History article on the money of colonial New Jersey. (Professor Grubb received Professor Michener’s comment too late to allow for concurrent reply but will reply in the next issue of this journal.)

Fads and trends in OECD economic thinking: Using the frequency of terms in the OECD’s Economic Surveys, Thomas Barnebeck Andersen shows how policy ideas in economics changed over time, including ‘demand management,’ ‘incomes policy,’ ‘output gap,’ ‘potential GDP,’ ‘structural unemployment,’ ‘structural reform,’ ‘macroprudential,’ ‘incentives,’ ‘deregulation,’ ‘liberalisation,’ ‘privatisation,’ ‘human capital,’ ‘education,’ and ‘PISA.’

The economics of economics: Using 291 person-year observations from UCSD Econ, Yifei Lyu and Alexis Akira Toda model Econ faculty compensation on publications and citations and find, among other things, no evidence of a gender gap.

The Liberal Tradition in South Africa, 1910–2019: Martin van Staden describes the unique history and current standing of classical liberalism in South Africa, including an extensive account of liberals in the nation’s politics. The article extends the Classical Liberalism in Econ, by Country series to 19 articles.

Lawrence Summers Deserves a Nobel Prize for Reviving the Theory of Secular Stagnation: Julius Probst makes the case, inaugurating the series on Who Should Get the Nobel Prize in Economics, and Why?

Convention defined: We reproduce by permission a large portion of David K. Lewis’s Convention: A Philosophical Study (1969), wherein he defined coordination equilibrium, coordination problem, common knowledge, and convention.

Mizuta’s 1967 checklist of Adam Smith’s library: We reproduce by permission the 1967 checklist created by Hiroshi Mizuta of the titles that were owned by Adam Smith. This checklist (supplemented by a list of additional once-elusive titles) provides a handy means for determining whether a title was in Smith’s personal library.

EJW Audio:

Ron Michener on Why It’s Important to Get Colonial U.S. Monetary History Right

Patrick Mardini on the Political Economy of Lebanon

Ivo Welch on Critical Finance Review

Call for papers

Who should get the Nobel prize in economics, and why?

EJW fosters open exchange. We welcome proposals and submissions of diverse viewpoints. EJW also welcomes ‘journal watch’ submissions beyond Econ.

Read the September 2019 issue in full (.pdf)

Table of contents (.pdf) with links to articles