Cliometrics as Economics Imperialism: Across the Watershed

Download or read book Cliometrics as Economics Imperialism: Across the Watershed written by Benjamin Fine and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-11-27 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Cliometrics as Economics Imperialism, Ben Fine traces the cliometric revolution, from before its emergence through three phases of the new, the newer and the newest economic history. These phases are shown to correspond to those of “economics imperialism”, the colonisation of topics and fields by mainstream economics, moving successively through as if there were perfectly working markets, as if imperfectly working markets, and these combined plus arbitrary inclusion of other variables. The text draws upon case studies, for example of the putative eighteenth-century consumer revolution, Douglass North, path dependence, and the British coal industry, and through exposing the reduction of economic theory and economic history deployed within them and giving rise to a corresponding reduction in the presence of the social, the historical and political economy.