The arrow of time in economics: from Robinson's critique to the new historical economics

Michael Turk

The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2010, vol. 17, issue 3, 471-492

Abstract: How time is comprehended in economics is central to the type of discipline to which economics is analogized. Rejecting the symmetrical notion of time in classical physics, Joan Robinson emphasized the importance of 'historical time', and hence history. A new generation of economists - including Paul Krugman, Paul David, and Brian Arthur - took up Robinson's challenge, seeking to create a new historical economics by relating random or 'accidental' historical events in different ways to the necessity of economic rules, and finding that, as Robinson saw, scale effects were crucial. Their efforts, however, fell short of integrating history into economics.

Keywords: Joan Robinson; Paul Krugman; Paul David; W. Brian Arthur; historical economics; scale effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09672560903204981 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:taf:eujhet:v:17:y:2010:i:3:p:471-492

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/REJH20

DOI: 10.1080/09672560903204981

Access Statistics for this article

The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought is currently edited by José Luís Cardoso

More articles in The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().