If one looks through the Directory of the American Economic Association for addresses, it will become clear that some economics departments are located in business schools and some in schools of arts and sciences. Historical Economics a Bridge between Liberal Arts and Business Studies? Chapter 2, in fact, was commissioned and then rejected by the editors of an encyclopedia, on the ground that it did not conform to their idea of how the subject should be treated. None is the typical paper for a refereed journal that enjoys the highest standing in academic circles. The scattered provenance of the separate papers - written for symposia, delivered at conferences, as lectures on special occasions, and one on Spanish silver that appeared as a pamphlet (Chapter 3) produced on my own initiative to satisfy curiosity - is indicated in the first footnote of each chapter. I come back to this in the Conclusion, which deals with the methodological question of whether history is a necessary dimension of the compleat economist, as I think it is. The title implies that there is a difference between an economist who deals with historical issues and a historian who studies past economic questions. This collection deals with economic and financial history. And yet I am a sufficient believer in the market test to defend myself against the charge of vainglory by pointing out that none of the eight has been published by a vanity press, subsidized by me, but each has been more or less willingly taken on, if not fought over, by some commissioning editor. The exercise has strong overtones of narcissism, which makes me uneasy, but may serve a useful purpose in assembling in convenient locations work that would otherwise remain scattered and in part lost (as perhaps it should be). This is the eighth book of my collected papers, each on a fairly narrow range of topics within economics - international economics, international financial questions, financial history and economic history (including some specialized topics such as the multinational corporation and the Marshall Plan). Historical Economics: Art or Science?. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1990 1990.

Preferred Citation: Kindleberger, Charles P.

Freeman pp132 micro pinner