 American Made: The Role of Economic History in the Training of PhD CandidatesMichael Haupert ()
A chapter in The State of Economic History, 2025, pp 1-21 from Springer Abstract: Abstract I examine the role of economic history in the training of economics PhD students in the United States. Economic history—once a cornerstone of graduate economics education alongside theory and econometrics—has seen its place in the doctoral curriculum steadily decline, despite its significant contributions to the discipline. Economic history, particularly in its cliometric form, has been instrumental in testing economic theories, building historical datasets, and shedding light on long-term growth dynamics. Finally, I provide empirical evidence on the current state of the field by examining 50 PhD programs in economics, and find that only a minority still offer economic history courses, with very few including it as either a core or optional field. This erosion is troubling: economic history offers contextualized understanding of data, promotes empirical rigor, and develops analytical tools that are highly relevant to current debates on institutions, growth, and inequality, and as such it should be an essential part of the training of an economist. Date: 2025 There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:frochp:978-3-032-01624-9_1 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from DOI: 10.1007/978-3-032-01624-9_1 Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in Frontiers in Economic History from Springer |
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