Economic History or History of Economics? A Review Essay on Sylvia Nasar's Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius

Orley Ashenfelter

No 6213, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In this essay I review Sylvia Nasar's long awaited new history of economics, Grand Pursuit. I describe how the book is an economic history of the period from 1850-1950, with distinguished economists' stories inserted in appropriate places. Nasar's goal is to show how economists work, but also to show that they are people too – with more than enough warts and foibles to show they are human! I contrast the general view of the role of economics in Grand Pursuit with Robert Heilbroner's remarkably different conception in The Worldly Philosophers. I also discuss more generally the question of why economists might be interested in their history at all.

Keywords: economic policy; economic growth; economic history (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B10 B30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15 pages
Date: 2011-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-his, nep-hpe and nep-pke
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - published in: Journal of Economic Literature, 2012, 50 (1), 96 - 102

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp6213.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Economic History or History of Economics? A Review Essay on Sylvia Nasar's Grand Pursuit: the Story of Economic Genius (2012)
Working Paper: Economic History or History of Economics? A Review Essay on Sylvia Nasar's Grand Pursuit: the Story of Economic Genius (2012)
Working Paper: Economic History or History of Economics? A Review Essay on Sylvia Nasar's Grand Pursuit: the Story of Economic Genius (2011)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6213

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().