Abstract
In the USA today the academic field of economic history is much closer to economics than it is to history in terms of professional behavior, a stylized fact that I call the “integration of economic history into economics.” I document this using two types of evidence—use of econometric language in articles appearing in academic journals of economic history and economics; and publication histories of successive cohorts of Ph.D.s in the first decade since receiving the doctorate. Over time, economic history became more like economics in its use of econometrics and in the likelihood of scholars publishing in economics, as opposed to, say, economic history journals. But the pace of change was slower in economic history than in labor economics, another subfield of economics that underwent profound intellectual change in the 1950s and 1960s, and there was also a structural break evident for post-2000 Ph.D. cohorts. To account for these features of the data, I sketch a simple, overlapping generations model of the academic labor market in which junior scholars have to convince senior scholars of the merits of their work in order to gain tenure. I argue that the early cliometricians—most notably, Robert Fogel and Douglass North—conceived of a scholarly identity for economic history that kept the field distinct from economics proper in various ways, until after 2000 when their influence had waned.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Source: see text
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Examples include UC-Berkeley, Boston University, Harvard, Michigan, Northwestern, Stanford, UC-Davis, UCLA, Vanderbilt, and Yale. Not all of these have dedicated research workshops in economic history but most do.
Here, “visible” means that an economic historian publishes in an economics journal. Below I present evidence that this has become quite common among scholars receiving their Ph.D.s after the year 2000. Examples of economic historians who received their Ph.D.s after 2000 and who routinely publish in economics journals are Ran Abramitzky (public economics), Martha Bailey (labor/demographic economics), Leah Boustan (urban economics), Carola Frydman (finance), and Nathan Nunn (trade). Among the many examples of well-known economists today who do not consider themselves to be economic historians primarily but who write in economic history from time to time are Daron Acemoglu, Oded Galor, Robert Gordon, Lawrence Katz, Matthew Kahn, Daniele Paserman, Thomas Piketty, Claudia Olivetti, Valerie Ramey, and James Robinson.
In particular, Abramitzky (2015) also uses GS to show that the percentage of economic history articles appearing in “top-five” economics journals (e.g. AER) increased after 2000, which is consistent with the findings of my Table 1. See also Selzer and Hamermesh (2017) who show that economic historians frequently co-author papers, just as in other fields of economics.
In writing this paper I have also been influenced by reading various unpublished documents from the papers of Robert Fogel, held at the Special Collections Research Center in the Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago; and from the papers of Douglass North, held at the Rubinstein Rare Books and Manuscript Collections, at Duke University. The content in the documents shaped the development of the theoretical framework in Sect. 3, as well as my discussion of scholarly identity for economic historians employed in economics departments. The documents that were most influential in my thinking can be found in Boxes 68 and 159 of the Fogel papers and Box 1 of the North papers. I am most grateful to David Mitch for alerting me to their existence.
See “Appendix 1” for the names of the scholars in the various samples. In the case of economic history sample #1, individuals can meet more than one of the four criteria for inclusion. I rank order these criteria and show the top ranked criteria by which scholars qualify for inclusion (for example, if a person served as President of the Economic History Association, this is criteria #1). “Leading” departments or equivalent business schools are those that fall into the top 10–15 in various rankings, for example, RePEc.
Such departments exist in the UK and Europe. While it certainly is of interest to examine whether professional behavior of scholars in economic history departments differs from that in economics or history departments, my interest in this paper lies in the USA where cliometrics originated. There are cliometricians who obtained interdisciplinary Ph.D.s in economic history; important examples include Michael Edelstein and Michael Haines.
An example of waxing and waning is the requirement in some departments that Ph.D. students in economics take a course in economic history. The requirement seems to have been introduced before World War Two. As of the early 1980s, there was such a requirement at Chicago, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and Yale. The requirement has been abandoned at Chicago and MIT; at Harvard, students must satisfy a distribution requirement that can be met by taking an economic history course; Stanford requires that students take at least one economic history course, as does Yale.
Well-known examples include Philip Hoffman and Naomi Lamoreaux, both former presidents of the Economic History Association.
There are other interdisciplinary examples in economics, the most obvious being law and economics and, to a (much) lesser extent, econometric theory, which overlaps with statistics.
All of the economic historians in sample #1 or #2 received Ph.D.s in economics with two exceptions (Michael Edelstein and Michael Haines) who, as previously noted, received interdisciplinary Ph.D.s in economic history in the 1970s. Because these programs included substantial coursework in economics and because both Edelstein and Haines have spent their academic careers in economics departments, I keep them in their respective samples (Edelstein, #1; Haines, #2).
There is slight censoring in samples #1 and #2, because not all individuals receiving their Ph.D.s after 2000 have experienced the first full decade of their professional career. The bias is extremely modest, however, because there is only one censored observation in sample #1 (Richard Hornbeck) and two in sample #2 (Eric Chaney and Marianne Wanamaker).
The sample of labor economists cuts off with the 1990s Ph.D. cohort because there are hardly any SOLE Fellows with Ph.D.s post-2000. The labor economics sample could be filled out for the post-2000 cohorts by adding scholars who obtained tenure at top departments, similar to sample #1 of economic historians, but I believe the substantive value of doing so would be very small; that is, it would merely confirm the strong economics “identity” evident in Panel C of Table 1.
See the last column in Table 2 for the overlap individuals in samples #1 and #2. Note that there is one person, Claudia Goldin, who appears in both economic history samples and the labor economics sample.
I have experimented with data extracted from EconLit and similar sources; however, my experience is that it is extremely difficult—and for some scholars, impossible—to generate complete publication histories this way. I have also experimented with using the Wayback machine to retrieve old copies of CVs and found it not to be fruitful.
A monograph can have more than one author but it cannot be an edited volume, which are not counted. I also do not count textbooks.
I only count articles appearing in academic journals (see “Appendix 2”). “Articles” includes full length papers, comments, and notes, except that for the economic historian samples I exclude dissertation summaries and discussant comments (including the comments by the dissertation conveners). These exclusions have no effect on the substantive findings.
The top-five journals are listed in “Appendix 2”. Articles appearing in the American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings are not considered to be top-five but are included in the count of articles in all other economics journals. It can be argued that the post-2000 cohorts benefited from the introduction by the AEA of the various American Economic Journals (e.g. AEJ: Applied) which function somewhat like a top-field journal. An individual receiving her Ph.D. in 2000 by definition could not publish in an AEJ during the first decade post-Ph.D. Using sample #1, if I assume every paper published in an AEJ by a post-2000 Ph.D. cohort scholar would have been, instead, published in an economic history journal instead if the AEJs had never been introduced, the proportion of articles published in economic history journals increases to 28.1 percent for the post-2000 Ph.D. cohort, still far below the percent so published by the pre-2000 Ph.D. cohorts. In other words, the structural break is robust to the introduction of the AEJ journals. I am grateful to Ran Abramitzky for raising this issue.
Sample sizes are too small for a detailed regression analysis, but one might wonder if the patterns are affected by differences across Ph.D. granting institutions. Accordingly, I estimated regressions for which the dependent variables are the same as in the column titles in Panels A and B of Table 1; the right-hand side variables are either dummies for decade of Ph.D. or linear time trends, plus a full set of Ph.D.-granting institution dummies. The results (not shown) do not affect my substantive conclusions about trends in publication histories across cohorts or the post-2000 structural break.
See Poelmans and Rousseau (2016) for evidence that disciplinary standards strongly affect the format and publication outlets chosen by junior scholars in economic history; and Diamond (1980) for evidence from the late 1970s that year of Ph.D. influenced an economic historian’s acceptance of cliometrics in the direction (negative, meaning older is less accepting) implied by my framework. Implicit in my argument is that the gatekeeping function of period #3 faculty has value, both to the gatekeepers and to those being evaluated. Alternatively, we can imagine a hierarchy beyond the department that values academic prestige and has sanctions in place that guard against a breakdown of tenure standards.
To consider another pertinent alternative, senior economic historians might convince their senior colleagues in other fields that junior economic historians will promote the discipline of economics by publishing in history outlets, and this advances the discipline overall.
Other factors not explicitly in my model may be relevant. An example is the availability of data for econometric analysis. The early cliometricians had to develop these data from scratch—typically, from archival sources—whereas labor economists, for example, benefited immediately from the availability of household surveys like the public use sample of the 1960 federal census.
As Fogel reminisced about the early years of his graduate teaching, “I challenged [Ph.D.] students to pick any page at random from whatever history book they had at hand. The odds were … that there’d be either an explicit or implicit quantitative statement that needed to be measured. The challenge was often taken up and I was never shown up[.]” The quotation is from Williamson and Lyons (2013, p. 350).
The three journals survive to this day, as does the Social Science History Association (SSHA), which was formed in 1976. SSHA is interdisciplinary by design by having “networks” in the various disciplines, including economics. Economic historians with Ph.D.s in economics continue to participate in the annual SSHA conference and, from time to time, publish in SSH, along with the JIH and HM; however, as shown in Panels A and B Table 1, this is far less common among post-2000 Ph.D.s than earlier cohorts.
In turn, a larger readership raises the likelihood that articles will be cited, to the economic benefit of the author(s).
Consider, for example, textbook writing. Several of the earliest cliometricians and their immediate students wrote textbooks that attempted to interpret traditional accounts of, say, American economic history in light of cliometric research but, as a scholarly activity, this has gone by the wayside as economic historians identify more strongly with a subfield. That said, there clearly is still a demand for scholarly books in economics that deal with the big picture, including economic history, and I see no reason for this to abate.
Points of first contact are important because they can serve as on-the-ground sources of ready information, for example, to professional historians about basic questions in economics—for example, what exactly do economists mean by the unemployment rate—as well as the esoteric—what is the best price available price index, say, for the antebellum USA?
References
Abramitzky R (2015) Economics and the modern economic historian. J Econ Hist 75:1240–1251
Acemoglu D, Robinson JA (2006) Economic origins of dictatorship and democracy. Cambridge University Press, New York
Acemoglu D, Johnson S, Robinson JA (2001) The colonial origins of comparative development: an empirical investigation. Am Econ Rev 91:1369–1401
Diamond AM Jr (1980) Age and the acceptance of cliometrics. J Econ Hist 40:838–841
Diamond J, Robinson JA (eds) (2011) Natural experiments of history. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Fogel RW, Engerman SL (1971) The reinterpretation of American economic history. Harper & Row, New York
Fogel RW, Engerman SL (1974) Time on the cross: the economics of American Negro slavery. Little, Brown, New York
Galor O, Weil D (2000) Population, technology and growth: from malthusian stagnation to the demographic transition and beyond. Am Econ Rev 90:806–828
Goldin C (1976) Urban slavery in the American South: a quantitative history. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Goldin C (1990) Understanding the gender gap: an economic history of american women. Oxford University Press, New York
Greenwood J, Seshardi A, Vandenbroucke G (2005) The baby boom and the baby bust. Am Econ Rev 95:183–207
Heckman JJ (1997) The value of quantitative evidence on the effect of the past on the present. Am Econ Rev Papers Proc 87:404–408
Hilt E (2017) Economic history, historical analysis, and the ‘new history of capitalism’. J Econ Hist 77:511–536
Lamoreaux NR (2016) Beyond the old and new: economic history in the United States. In: Boldizzoni F, Hudson P (eds) Routledge handbook of global economic history. Routledge, New York, pp 35–54
Margo RA (2011) The economic history of the American economic review: a century’s explosion of economics research. Am Econ Rev 101:9–35
Mejia J (2015) The evolution of economic history since 1950: from cliometrics to cliodynamics. Tiempo Econ 2:79–103
North D (1997) Cliometrics—40 years later. Am Econ Rev Papers Proc 87:412–414
Olmstead AL, Rhode PW (2016) Cotton, slavery, and the new history of capitalism. Working paper, Department of Economics, University of Michigan
Poelmans E, Rousseau S (2016) Quantifying the heterogeneity of publication cultures in economic, business, and financial history. Essays Econ Bus Hist 34:95–135
Romer C (1986) Spurious volatility in historical unemployment data. J Polit Econ 94:1–37
Romer C (1994) The end of economic history? J Econ Educ 25:49–66
Selzer AJ, Hamermesh DS (2017) Co-authorship in economic history and economics: are we different? Working paper, Department of Economics, Royal Holloway University of London
Solow RM (1956) A contribution to the theory of economic growth. Q J Econ 70:65–94
Solow RM (1957) Technical change and the aggregate production function. Rev Econ Stat 39:312–320
Stigler G (1984) Economics: the imperial science? Scand J Econ 86:301–313
Whaples R (1991) A quantitative history of the journal of economic history and the cliometrics revolution. J Econ Hist 51:289–301
Whaples R (2002) The supply and demand of economic history: recent trends in the Journal of Economic History. J Econ Hist 62:524–532
Williamson SH, Lyons JS (2013) Interview with Robert W. Fogel. In: Lyons JS, Cain LP, Willison SH (eds) Reflections on the cliometrics revolution: conversations with economic historians. Routledge, New York, pp 332–353 (Paperback edition)
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to two anonymous referees, Ran Abramitzky, Jeremy Atack, Leah Boustan, Lee Breckenridge, William Collins, Stanley Engerman, Martin Fiszbein, Claudia Goldin, Carol Heim, Kevin Lang, David Mitch, Claudia Rei, Paul Rhode, John Wallis, Robert Whaples; and workshop participants at Harvard University and in the session on “Cliometrics in Historical Perspective: In Remembrance of Robert Fogel and Douglass North,” held at the ASSA meetings in Chicago, IL in January 2017 for helpful comments. I acknowledge the generous assistance of Michael Haupert for helping to complete my collection of CVs of economic historians; and of David Mitch, for alerting me to the existence of unpublished documents from the papers of Robert Fogel held at the University of Chicago and from the papers of Douglass North held at Duke University. This paper is dedicated to the memory of Robert Fogel and Douglass North.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Appendices
Appendix 1
This appendix lists the names of scholars included in the two samples of economic historians and the one sample of labor economists analyzed in the paper. To be included in any of these samples, the individual must meet the requirements for inclusion and I must be able to obtain a copy of the CV. With the exception of two scholars (Michael Edelstein and Michael Haines), all individuals in the two economic history samples have Ph.D.s in economics.
1.1 Economic History Sample #1
This sample consists of prominent economic historians. To be considered “prominent,” the individual must satisfy at least one of four criteria: (1) has served (or is serving) as President of the Economic History Association (2) editor of the Journal of Economic History or Explorations in Economic History (3) Fellow of the Cliometrics Society (4) received tenure at a leading economics department or equivalent business school. In the table below, I rank order the criteria as above, listing only the first criteria met, even if the person satisfies more than one.
1.2 Economic History Sample #2, Dissertation Conveners
To be included in sample #2, the individual must have served as the convener of one of the two dissertation sessions held at the annual meetings of the Economic History Association. The last column of Table 2 indicates if an individual in sample #1 also served as a convener. In addition, the following scholars are in sample #2: Brian A’Hearn, Howard Bodenhorn, George Boyer, Loren Brandt, Stephen Broadberry, Joyce Burnette, Louis Cain, Leonard Carlson, Eric Chaney, Mauricio Drelichman, Alan Dye, Greg Clark, Lee Craig, Michael Edelstein, Farley Grubb, Christopher Hanes, Carol Heim, Eric Hilt, Ian Keay, Zorina Khan, Carolyn Moehling, Petra Moser, John Murray, John Nye, Kevin O’Rourke, Joshua Rosenbloom, Carol Shiue, Kenneth Snowden, Melissa Thomasson, Paul Uselding, Marianne Wanamaker, and David Weir.
1.3 Labor Economics Sample
This sample consists entirely of Fellows of the Society of Labor Economists. The following are included: Daron Acemoglu, George Akerlof, Joseph Altonji, Joshua Angrist, Orley Ashenfelter, David Autor, Marianne Bertrand, Sandra Black, Rebecca Blank, Richard Blundell, George Borjas, Charles Brown, Kenneth Burdett, David Card, Janet Currie, John DiNardo, Ron Ehrenberg, Henry Farber, Roland Fryer, Victor Fuchs, Claudia Goldin, Ruben Gronau, John Haltiwanger, Dan Hamermesh, Eric Hanushek, James Heckman, Caroline Hoxby, Lawrence Katz, John Kennan, Alan Krueger, Kevin Lang, Edward Lazear, Thomas Lemieux, Shelley Lundberg, Costas Meghir, Robert Michael, Robert Moffit, Enrico Moretti, Richard Murnane, Kevin Murphy, Derek Neal, John Pencavel, Robert Pollak, Canice Prendergast, Mark Rosenzweig, Kathryn Shaw, Robert Shimer, James Smith, Jeffrey Smith, Gary Solon, Christopher Taber, Petra Todd, Robert Topel, Yoram Weiss, Finis Welch, and Robert Willis.
Appendix 2
This appendix classifies academic journals that appear at least once on any of the CVs of scholars in the three samples. The journals classified as top-five, all other economics, economic history, and non-economics academic. In the all other economics category, labor economics journals have “labor” in parentheses after the title.
2.1 Top-five Economics Journals
American Economic Review, Econometrica, Journal of Political Economy, Review of Economic Studies, Quarterly Journal of Economics.
2.2 All Other Economics Journals
Advances in Economic Analysis and Policy; Advances in Macroeconomics; Advances in the Study of Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Economic Growth; American Economic Journal: Applied Economics; American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics; American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings; American Journal of Agricultural Economics; American Journal of Economics and Sociology; American Law and Economic Review; Annales de Economia; Annals of Economic and Social Measurement; Annual Review of Economics; Applied Economics; British Journal of Industrial Relations (labor); Brookings Papers on Economic Activity; Canadian Business Economics; Canadian Journal of Economics; Carnegie-Rochester Conference on Public Policy; Central Bank of Ireland Quarterly Bulletin; CESIfo Economic Studies; Contemporary Policy Issues; DICE Report-Journal for Institutional Comparisons; Eastern Economic Journal; Econometric Reviews; Economia Internazionale; Economica; Economics; Economie Appliquée; Economic Record; Economics and Human Biology; Economics and Politics; Economic and Political Weekly; Economic Development and Cultural Change; Economic Journal; Economic Inquiry; Economics Letters; Economic Policy Review; Economic and Social Review; European Economic Review; Explorations in Economics Research; Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review; Fiscal Studies; German Economic Review; Health Economics; Industrial and Labor Relations Review (labor); Indian Economic Review; Industrial Relations (labor); International Economic Review; International Labor Review (labor); International Migration Review (labor); Journal of Applied Econometrics; Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humane; Journal of Banking and Finance; Journal of Business and Economic Statistics; Journal of Common Market Studies; Journal of Comparative Economics; Journal of Development Economics; Journal of Economic and Social Measurement; Journal of Economic Education; Journal of Econometrics; Journal of Economic Growth; Journal of Economic Integration; Journal of Economic Inequality; Journal of Economic Issues; Journal of Economic Literature; Journal of Economic Perspectives; Journal of Economic Theory; Journal of the European Economic Association; Journal of the European Economic Association, Papers and Proceedings; Journal of Farm Economics; Journal of Finance; Journal of Financial Economics; Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis; Journal of Human Resources (labor); Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics; Journal of International Economics; Journal of International Money and Finance; Journal of Japanese and International Economics; Journal of Labor Economics (labor); Journal of Labor Research (labor); Journal of Law and Economics; Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization; Journal of Macroeconomics; Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking; Journal of Monetary Economics; Journal of Population Economics; Journal of Public Economics; Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics; Journal of Risk and Uncertainty; Journal of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association; Journal of Urban Economics; Land Economics; Labour Economics (labor); Malayan Economic Review; Monetary and Economic Studies; Monthly Labor Review (labor); NBER Macroeconomics Annual; National Tax Journal; Networks and Spatial Economics; New England Economic Review; Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics; Oxford Economic Papers; Oxford Review of Economic Policy; Pacific Economic Review; Philippine Economic Review; Public Choice; Public Finance; Public Finance and Management; Proceedings of the Annual Meetings of the Industrial Relations Research Association (labor); Quantitative Economics; Quarterly Review of Economics and Business; Rand Journal of Economics; Regional Science and Urban Economcs; Ricerche Economiche; Research in Labor Economics (labor); Research in Population Economics; Review of Black Political Economy; Review of Development Economics; Review of Economic Dynamics; Review of Economics and Statistics; Review of Financial Studies; Review of Social Economy; Rivista di Politica Economica; Scandinavian Journal of Economics; Taxing and Spending; The Manchester School of Economics and Social Studies; Transportation Research Forum; Transportation Research Record; Southern Economic Journal; Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv; World Bank Economic Review; World Bank Economic Observer
2.3 Economic History Journals
Advances in Agricultural Economic History; Australian Economic History Review; Business and Economic History; Cliometrica; Economy and History; Economic History of Developing Regions; Economic History Review; Essays in Economic and Business History; European Review of Economic History; Explorations in Economic History; Financial History; Financial History Review; Irish Economic and Social History; Journal of Economic History; Journal of European Economic History; Research in Economic History; Revista di Storia Economica; Yearbook of Economic History.
2.4 Non-Economics Academic Journals
Advances in Strategic Management; Agriculture and Human Values; Agricultural History; Agricultural History Review; American Historical Review; American Journal of Education; American Political Science Review; Annals of Human Biology; Annales; Annales de Demographie Historique; Annales E.S.C.; B.C. Studies; Behavior Genetics; Bulletin of the History of Medicine; Business History Review; Canadian Public Policy; Chicago Policy Review; China Quarterly; Civil War History; Communal Societies; Continuity and Change; Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy; Demography; Doctrine and Life; Education Next; Educational Researcher; East Central Europe; Environment and History; Family Planning Perspectives; German History; Harvard Educational Review; Health Affairs; Health Policy and Education; Historical Methods; History of Economics Society Bulletin; History of European Ideas; History and Theory; History of Political Economy; Impact on Instructional Improvement; Independent Review; International Journal of Maritime History; International Regional Science Review; Journal of the American Statistical Association; Journal of Conflict Resolution; Journal of Family History; Journal of Interdisciplinary History; Journal of Law Reform; Journal of Modern Physics C; Journal of Research in Education; Journal of Regional Science; Journal of the Scientific Study of Religion; Journal of Social Science; Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland; Industrial and Corporate Change; International Journal of Maritime History; Journal of Educational Measurement; Journal of Legal Studies; Journal of Policy Analysis and Management; Journal of Public Policy and Marketing; Journal of Regional Science; Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency; Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference; Kyklos; Legislative Studies Quarterly; Management Science; Mariner’s Mirror; Mathematical and Computer Modeling; Mathematical Social Sciences; New International Realities; Natural Resources Journal; Pacific Historical Review; Papers and Proceedings of the American Statistical Association; Pennsylvania History; Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography; Perspectivas: Análisis de temas críticos para el desarrollo sostenible; Perspectives on Politics; Policy Sciences; Political Methodology; Political Science Quarterly; Population and Development Review; Population Studies; Public Policy; Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society; Proceedings of the Conference on Theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge; Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; Proceedings of the Regional Science Association; Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy; Publishing History; Rationality and Society; Regional Studies; Review of Education; Reviews in European History; Rivista Internazionale; Rocky Mountain Social Science Journal; School Research Forum; Science; Sloan Management Review; Social Concept; Social Science History; Social Science Quarterly; Social Studies of Science; Social Research; Sociology of Education; Sociological Methodology; Spine; Studia Hibernica; Teachers College Record; Technology and Culture; The American Statistician; The Old Northwest; Theory and Society.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Margo, R.A. The integration of economic history into economics. Cliometrica 12, 377–406 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11698-018-0170-8
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11698-018-0170-8
Keywords
- Economics
- Economic history
- Integration
- Labor economics
- Econometrics
- Overlapping generations
- Scholarly identity