Is History of Economics What Historians of Economic Thought Do? A Quantitative Investigation

Maria Cristina Marcuzzo and Giulia Zacchia

No 4_2015, STOREPapers from Associazione Italiana per la Storia dell'Economia Politica - StorEP

Abstract: This paper presents a quantitative investigation into the history of economic thought. Building on previous work (Marcuzzo 2008, 2012), we propose an empirical study in with the aim of describing the dynamics of changes in HET in recent years, detecting three trends: 1) a sort of ‘stepping down from the shoulders of giants’, namely a move towards studies of ‘minor’ figures and/or economists from a more recent past; 2) the blossoming of archival research into unpublished work and correspondence; 3) less theory-laden investigations, connecting intellectual circles, linking characters and events. Using data from Econlit we show the evolution of the overall publication of HET articles (1955-2013) and of HET fully or partially specialized journals (1993-2013); for the latter, by devising proxies which are amenable to quantitative assessment, we demonstrate that there is some evidence to support these claims.

Keywords: History of economic thought; Bibliometrics; Economics journals; History of economics; Quantitative assessment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A14 B20 B40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2015-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-hpe, nep-pke and nep-sog
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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http://www.storep.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/WP-4-2015.pdf First version, 2015 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Chapter: Is History of Economics What Historians of Economic Thought Do? A Quantitative Investigation (2024)
Journal Article: Is History of Economics What Historians of Economic Thought Do? A Quantitative Investigation (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hpo:wpaper:4_2015

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