Dear Colleague,

Thank you for your interest in the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer
Institute on Teaching the History of Political Economy. The Institute will be held on
the campus of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina from June 6 through June
25, 2010. I invite your application to participate in this exciting endeavor.
At this three week NEH Summer Institute we will trace the development of economic
thought from the middle ages to the middle of the last century. The history of economic
thought is disappearing as a subject in many American economics departments, so one
purpose of the Institute is to renew professional interest among economists in the
intellectual history of their discipline, and thereby to reintroduce the subject into the
undergraduate curriculum. Our intended audience here is economics faculty who may
desire to teach the subject but who do not feel they have the background to do so.
Another purpose is to introduce the history of economic thought to professors in the
humanities who may want to infuse elements of the history of political economy into
their own courses. We feel that having a mix of scholars at the Institute will enrich our
discussions of the texts.

The content of the Institute, described in more detail directly below, will inevitably
contain elements of a survey, given the goal of providing a broad introduction to the
field. But time will also be spent working through certain key texts, as well as
introducing select interpretative debates and issues that surround those texts. What
follows are the areas that we will explore each week. A list of questions that the
readings might provoke are also noted. That many of the questions are as alive today as
they were when they were first broached by our predecessors will be evident.
***
Week 1 will treat the thought of three early groups, the scholastics, mercantilists, and
physiocrats. We will then take up Adam Smiths Wealth of Nations, and conclude with
Thomas Robert Malthuss Essay on Population.
Questions that arise from the study of the economic writings of the church fathers, the
scholastics, typically address the idea of justice in the market place. For example: Is
there a just price for a good, and how might we determine it? If money is sterile, should
the charging of interest be prohibited? Are profits immoral? Will charity solve the
problem of poverty? How do religious tenets affect economic development?
Mercantilist thought emerged contemporaneously with the rise of the nation-state and
the quest for national power, and mercantilist writers typically argued for protectionist
policies that would lead to a net inflow of gold and silver bullion. Questions here
include: Is bullion the source of wealth? What are the long term effects of running an
export surplus? Whose interests did the recommended policies advance? Finally, the
French physiocrats argued that nature and land were the ultimate sources of value, and
accordingly defended policies that would allow French agriculture to flourish. Some
questions here might be: Why did such an organized school emerge when it did, and
why did it disappear so quickly? Does their theory of value make sense, and are there
modern analogues? The physiocrats argued that positive law must follow natural law:
what does this mean? The term laissez faire is associated with the physiocrats; were
they free traders?
Background information on Adam Smith, considered by many to be the founding father
of economics, will place him in the context of the Scottish Enlightenment and introduce
some of the themes of his earlier book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Then we will
work through parts of The Wealth of Nations, examining his arguments about the nature
and causes of national wealth. Questions here include: In Moral Sentiments Smith
emphasized sympathy or fellow-feeling as a key element in human nature, whereas in
Wealth he emphasized self-interest. How might we reconcile this apparent
contradiction? What did Smith mean when he said that the division of labor is limited
by the extent of the market? How does his value theory compare to the others we have
encountered? What were Smiths views about the role of the state in the economy? To
what does the invisible hand refer?
A brief introduction to the ideas of William Godwin and the Marquis de Condorcet and
the reaction to the French Revolution provide background for The Essay on Population.
In contrast to Smith, Malthus provided a dark vision for the future of capitalism:
population growth leading to crises, diminishing returns in agricultural production, and
recurring gluts, or over-supply of goods. Questions here might include: Does Malthus
theory about population have any modern applications? Did he anticipate Keynes with
his theory of gluts? Was Malthus a Scrooge in terms of social policy?
Week 2 will cover the British classical tradition, the writings of Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels, and the marginalist revolution of the 1870s.
Among the contributors to the early 19th century British Classical system were Jeremy
Bentham, James Mill, David Ricardo, and John Stuart Mill. Ricardo showed the
assumptions that were necessary for a labor theory of value to hold and developed the
idea of comparative advantage. Other writers during this period were, variously, strong
advocates of free trade, seemed to deny the possibility of the business cycle, and
developed the idea of rational economic man. Questions here might include: What is a
labor theory of value, exactly? Was Ricardo guilty of what Joseph Schumpeter dubbed
the Ricardian vice, the practice of deriving policy conclusions from simple analytical
models? Are we? How did Smith, Malthus, and Ricardo compare in their predictions
about the future of capitalism? How might we characterize the main elements of the
British classical system by the mid-19th century? Was John Stuart Mill right that
questions of production are separable from questions of income distribution?
An excerpt from Engels Working Class Manchester describing the squalor of city life
in this period will set the stage for Marx and Engels. We will identify the intellectual
origins of their ideas in the writings of Hegel, the utopian socialists, and British
political economists, then show how Marx transformed Ricardos labor theory of value
into a theory of exploitation. We will then critically analyze Marx and Engels claims
about the laws of motion of the capitalist system, laws which predict its eventual and
inevitable collapse. Questions might include: How did Marx turn Hegel right-side up?
Which of their claims about the defects of capitalism make sense? Which predictions
have come to pass, and which not? Can open-ended historical predictions be falsified?
How do the policy recommendations of The Communist Manifesto sound today?
The marginal revolution refers to the multiple discoveries of the marginal principle,
which provides the foundation for modern day microeconomic theory. (An example of
the marginal principle is that a consumer maximizes his or her utility, or satisfaction, by
equalizing the marginal utility to price ratios over all goods, where marginal utility
refers to the utility derived from a small increment of each good.) The three discoverers
came from different countries with different intellectual traditions: William Stanley
Jevons from England, Lon Walras from Switzerland, and Carl Menger from Austria.
Accompanying the revolution was the rise of mathematical analysis in economics, and
all of this took place against the backdrop of rising labor agitation and the formation of
socialist political parties. Questions here might include: In which ways were the
analyses of the founders similar, and which ways different? Why did the revolution
happen when it did, and how did it relate to the changes taking place in the larger
society? Did the marginal revolution make economics more scientific?

Week 3 will cover the Cambridge tradition from Alfred Marshall to John Maynard
Keynes, then examine the emergence of the Chicago School of Economics and the
modern Austrian tradition as revealed in the writings of Milton Friedman and Friedrich
A. Hayek.
Alfred Marshall was the dominant figure at the University of Cambridge in the late
Victorian period. He played a key role in the professionalization of economics and in
positioning economists to assist in policy-making. Marshalls Principles of Economics
was for forty years at once a source of new ideas and the major English language
textbook, providing such key concepts as demand and supply analysis, elasticities of
demand and supply, and the use of the short and long runs. His successor A.C. Pigou
famously told his classes that It is all in Marshall. Questions here include: Was it
really all in Marshall? How did his treatment differ from what one gets in a modern
economics textbook? What is the role of the economist in the larger society?

John Maynard Keynes was a member of the Bloomsbury group of writers and artists, a
policy advisor to the Treasury and the Liberal Party, a frequent contributor to the
weeklies, the Editor of the Economic Journal, and much more. As England endured
economic decline in the 1920s, and as the world entered an economic depression in the
1930s and witnessed the rise of totalitarianism in fascist and communist varieties, he
wrote both as a journalist and an economic theorist about how various forms of state
intervention might be used to rescue capitalism. The end result was his 1936 book, The
General Theory. Questions might include: How did the Bloomsbury connection affect
Keynes economics? Was Keynes a reformer or a revolutionary? How did he turn his
work on policy into a theoretical system? Later writers sometimes distinguish
Keynesian economics from the economics of Keynes. Was Keynes a Keynesian?
Against the backdrop of the Cold War, the Chicago School of Economics formed
around such scholars as Milton Friedman and George Stigler. Chicago School
economists were strong advocates of free markets, were critical of Keynesian fiscal
policy as a tool for stabilizing the economy, preferring instead a monetary rule, and
emphasized the predictive adequacy of theories as a key determinant of theory choice.
The Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek shared many of these views, but also stressed
how the market system helps to coordinate human action in a world of dispersed
knowledge, and was a critic both of socialism and of the scientistic pretensions of
economists and other social scientists. Some questions include: Is there a Chicago
School, and if so, what are the defining characteristics of its doctrines? Is Friedmans
methodological position tenable? Friedman and Hayek agreed about many things; on
what things did they differ? Do capitalism and freedom go hand in hand? Competition
and cooperation are often viewed as opposites: How can competition be a means of
social cooperation?
Wednesday evening sessions will be devoted to special topics. On the first Wednesday
there will be a presentation by the Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts
librarian on the Economists Papers Project (EPP) at Duke. On the second Wednesday
faculty will share ideas about various classroom exercises that have proven effective in
engaging students. Some of these include a mock trial of Adam Smith; a Raft Debate
(three people are on a raft, and only one can survive) with Karl Marxs legacies as
economist, revolutionary, and social thinker pitted against each another; the Socialist
Calculation Debate redux; how would Keynes and Hayek analyze the 2008 financial
meltdown? On the final Wednesday participants will provide an evaluation and
constructive critique of the institute, with an eye toward improving future institutes.
***
Now to matters logistical. The Institute will run for three weeks, from Sunday June 6
through Friday June 25. Registration and a welcome dinner will take place on the first
Sunday. On Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays of each week, there will
be 3 sessions each day, two in the morning, one in the late afternoon. On Fridays there
will be only two morning sessions. Early afternoons are free for reading and study, and
participants may do as they like on the weekends. (Durham is equidistant between the
Blue Ridge mountains and some of the most pleasant beaches on the east coast, each
about three hours away.) There will be a closing dinner on Thursday, June 24, and the
Institute will officially close after the second session on Friday June 25.
Three faculty members will join me at the Institute for one week each: Steven Medema
(University of Colorado-Denver), Sandra Peart (University of Richmond), and Bradley
Bateman (Denison University). We will split up the sessions among us, and
occasionally a session will be run by another member of the Duke faculty: Craufurd
Goodwin, Roy Weintraub, or Kevin Hoover.
Steve Medema will join us the first week. He has a broad knowledge of the history of
political economy, gained both as the editor of the Journal of the History of Economic
Thought, and as the co-editor (with Warren Samuels) of The History of Economic
Thought: A Reader. Broad-based knowledge is particularly important the first week,
when we will be dealing with a number of early schools of thinkers. Sandra Peart, who
has written on a number of 19th century thinkers, joins us for the second week. In
addition to her strong scholarship, Sandra has long been involved in the education of
young economists in the field. She set up the Young Scholars program at the annual
History of Economics Society (HES) meetings, and has from 2004 helped run a summer
institute aimed at allowing young scholars to present their research before and often
alongside senior scholars in the field. Bradley Bateman, a Keynes specialist, joins us for
the third week. Provost of Denison University, Brad is a strong proponent of the
importance of a liberal arts education generally, and for the education of economists in
particular. He and I have participated in workshops exploring how to develop the
history of economic thought class as a writing-intensive course. As for my own
scholarship, I have books on both the methodology of economics and on F. A. Hayek
and the Austrian tradition. I have taught classes in the field for over thirty years, and
participated in many of the HES initiatives to further promote the field. The invited
Duke faculty, Goodwin, Hoover, and Weintraub, are specialists in the history of
Keynes, of macroeconomics, and of the development of mathematical economics,
respectively. Every person mentioned above has served as President of the HES.
The Summer Institute will be held in the Social Science Building at Duke University.
Duke, which boasts five specialists in the field on its faculty, is an ideal place to hold an
Institute on the history of economic thought. It is home to the Center for History of
Political Economy, a center whose mission is to promote and support research in, and
the teaching of, the history of political economy. The premier journal in the field,
History of Political Economy, is published here. The Duke University Libraries include
the William R. Perkins Library (located footsteps away from the Social Science
Building) and its seven branches. An open stack system with collections containing over
5 million volumes, as well as manuscripts, public documents, archival holdings, and an
array of electronic resources, it is ranked among the top ten of private university library
systems. There is an extensive microfilm collection, which includes the Goldsmiths-
Kress Library of Economic Literature. Of particular interest to historians of political
economy are the archival holdings contained in the Economist Papers Project at Duke,
which comprises the correspondence, manuscripts, drafts, and other work products of
more than forty distinguished economists, mostly from the 20th century, including the
academic papers of eight Nobel Prize winners as well as such notables as Carl Menger
and Oskar Morgenstern, and the papers of the American Economic Association. All
participants will be able to use the libraries and will have wireless access to the internet
via the Duke system while on campus.
Participants will be provided with single, air-conditioned rooms, with linens, towels and
washcloths, in the Edens dormitory complex on west campus, for a total package price
of $785. The building that we will use has been reserved exclusively for our Summer
Institute participants, has attractive common areas and a small kitchen, and is only about
a five minute walk from the Social Science building. We highly recommend that
participants use this option, but those who wish to stay off campus may certainly do so.
The University Inn has rooms available at a special rate of $63.28 plus tax per night.
The Inn is about a 20 minute walk from the Social Sciences building, and its rooms
include free parking, free high speed internet, and a complimentary continental
breakfast. The Washington Duke Inn is a four star quality hotel on the edge of campus
about a 10 minute walk from the Social Sciences building. Recently its rates on
Hotel.com have run about $130 plus tax per night. Other housing options may be found
on such sites as Craigslist. For those who stay on campus, parking passes are available
at $10 a week, and a gym pass is available for $40. There are many places to eat on
campus and off, though if enough people indicate they would like to use it, a campus
meal plan is also available for $700 total. All participants will be able to use the
libraries and will have wireless access to the internet via the Duke system while on
campus.
Participation is limited to twenty-five applicants. Three spaces will be reserved for
qualified graduate students in economics or the humanities. Applicants who are selected
to participate in the Summer Institute will be paid a stipend of $2700, half payable on
arrival at the Institute, and the other half payable in the final week of the program.
Stipends are considered taxable income. Participants who, for any reason, do not
complete the full tenure of the project must refund a pro-rata portion of the stipend.
If you wish to apply, application information and guidelines are available HERE. Your
completed application should arrive no later than March 2, 2010. We prefer that all
materials be submitted by e-mail attachment to Angela.Zemonek@duke.edu with the
subject line SI Application. If you choose instead to submit your materials by regular
mail, the mailing address is:
Ms. Angela Zemonek
Center for the History of Political Economy
Duke University
Box 90097
Durham, N. C. 27708-0097
Attn. NEH Summer Institute
Perhaps the most important part of the application is the essay. This essay should
include your reasons for applying to the Institute; your relevant personal and academic
information; what you hope to accomplish; and the relation of your study to your
teaching.
I hope that you will agree that those of us who are organizing the Summer Institute have
put together an intellectually stimulating program. We look forward to your application.
Sincerely,
Bruce Caldwell
Research Professor of Economics
Director, NEH Summer Institute on Teaching the History of Economic Thought
Director, Center for the History of Political Economy