Abstract
Economic history is an interdisciplinary field that fuses economics with history, two disciplines that often misunderstand one another. This chapter bridges these two disciplines by discussing archetypical approaches and research strategies in each. The authors contrast the differences between deductive, inductive and abductive reasoning in scholarly enquiry. They conclude with a call for consideration to (historical) context when conducting research in economics and economic history.
We thank graduate students at Queen’s University Belfast for the lively seminar discussion that underpins this chapter, and Graham Brownlow, Rob Gilles and Tom Hulme for comments on an earlier draft.
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Notes
- 1.
Anyway, it did occur in France, and just a few short decades later than England.
- 2.
What we have in mind here is a Humean/Popperian rather than a classical understanding of induction—one in which falsification plays a central role. See Thornton (2017).
- 3.
Our characterisations of bad economics and bad history are perhaps a little unfair on practitioners of these disciplines. But we think there is merit in attacking straw men because they can provide clean and clear models of what to avoid. For a famous example of this rhetorical approach, see the way in which John Maynard Keynes uses “Professor Pigou” (Arthur Cecil Pigou) as a straw man “orthodox economist” throughout his General Theory (1936).
- 4.
Deirdre McCloskey (2018) makes a somewhat similar argument.
- 5.
Graham Brownlow, our colleague, argues that a better term for stylised facts is “stylised fictions”.
- 6.
Our advice to students visiting archives is to bring a good, simple, pencil. It has to look like a pencil (please, no mechanical pencils!). It cannot have an integrated eraser. Failure to follow this advice will usually result in an archivist confiscating your writing materials.
- 7.
Perhaps even too much context!
- 8.
This famous line comes from LP. Hartley’s 1953 novel, The Go-Between.
- 9.
Do not let economists tell you otherwise because they are the ones who are probably being delusional about theory, not you!
- 10.
Walt Rostow (1960) is perhaps one of the most well-known exponents of this logic.
- 11.
Reciprocal comparison encapsulates pretty well the important lessons of “hermeneutics”, the philosophy of understanding.
Reading List
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Colvin, C.L., Wagenaar, H. (2018). Economics Versus History. In: Blum, M., Colvin, C. (eds) An Economist’s Guide to Economic History. Palgrave Studies in Economic History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96568-0_2
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