Ok, but post the notes and the quizzes, ok? I've been wanting a good, cheap education on the very subject :-) :-)

Professor,
reading list, please!!!

With apologies if this is too trivial, but I'm still baffled by competing claims of success and failure for the Reagan tax cuts and the Kennedy tax cuts. Different times and different starting points, but proponents and opponents crank up their volume so loud that I can't hear a consensus. Maybe there isn't any, but it seems like we would be better served in current decisions if there was some agreement about the results of economic actions in the past.

Here are some of my choices:

-Bureaucracy by Ludwig von Mises

-The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism by Michael Novak

-From Here to Economy (A Shortcut to Economic Literacy) by Todd G. Buchholz

-New Ideas From Dead Economists by Todd G. Buchholz

-The Capitalist Philosophers-by Andrea Gabor

-The Capitalist Revolution (Fifty Propositions about Propserity, Equality, and Liberty) by Peter L. Berger

"Different times and different starting points, but proponents and opponents crank up their volume so loud that I can't hear a consensus."

Depends whether you're talking about serious analysis, or partisan commentary...

Well, if I wanted partisan commentary rather than serious analysis, I would be spending my time elsewhere. I count on not just Brad, but his many posting contributors, to provide insightful analysis with a minimum of chest thumping and moral rectitude. There are a few exceptions, but I have learned their names and step daintily around their posts to avoid soiling my shoes.

OK, we all show up here, so it should come as no surprise to the Professor that we value his thoughts. Now, he wants ours. I would like to propose a quid pro quo, along the lines suggested by Emma. Brad, how about putting the whole silly thing on the web? Lecture notes, reading list, supplemental teaching materials, anything you’ve got. I, for one, will not keep up with the class (a lifetime of under-achievement is not a thing to be lightly cast aside), but any comment we offer could prove helpful in some future history course. (Besides, put Eichengreen and DeLong together and I really want to sign up.)

What are the dates to be covered? Will there be any readings on ancient economies? Other weird stuff like prison economies? Chronological? Comparative?

David Thomson likes the books you would expect him to like, given prior postings. The ones he suggests that I’ve read, I mostly like, too. I’m betting Brad will tend toward more “rigor”, though. In any case, some balance is needed. Berger is who Berger is. If memory serves, his 50 propositions have been around for many years, so have been tested by big events he could not have predicted. If they end up on the reading list, let’s hold them up against the least convenient developments and see how they do, individually. Maybe we’ll get 40 that shine and 10 that pale. It would be good to know, and, to stick to the history theme, it would help understand the post-Vietnam sorting out of partisan economic thought. Is there a similarly schematic treatment from a supporter of mixed economies that could get similar treatment? None come to mind, it would be fun to have a run-off, maybe find the best of both.

Thanks for the recommendations, David.

"In any case, some balance is needed. Berger is who Berger is. If memory serves, his 50 propositions have been around for many years, so have been tested by big events he could not have predicted. If they end up on the reading list, let’s hold them up against the least convenient developments and see how they do, individually. Maybe we’ll get 40 that shine and 10 that pale."

Peter Berger's book has withstood the test of time. “The Capitalist Revolution” was published in 1986. Chapter ten “The Shape and uses of a Theory of Capitalism” is as relevant today as it was some sixteen years ago. The fifty propositions found between pages 211-215 will blow your socks off. Is Berger some sort of capitalist theorist who fails to note its limitations? Nope, allow me to cite these two following propositions:

"34) The EAst Asian evidence falsifies the thesis that a high degree of state intervention in the economy is incompatible with successful capitalist development.

35) The East Asian evidence provides weak support for the proposition that successful capitalist development generates pressures toward democracy."

You might wish to disagree wit Berger, but it must be conceded that the man is no ideologue.

On the origins of the industrial revolution, is there any serious challenge to the thesis in: David Landes: The Unbound Prometheus; CUP (1969), that industrialisation first ran a course in Britain? Data on per capita GDP in European countries through the 19th century in Maddison: Forces in Capitalist Development; OUP (1991) seems to support that. The only close competitor is the Netherlands. The challenging question is: Why?

With reference to dirigiste tendencies in East Asian economies in the last 50 years, it can hardly be argued that the first industrial revolution in Britain owed anything much to state direction or control. William Pitt, prime minister 1783-1801 and 1804-6, was greatly influenced by Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776) and thereby committed to a laissez-faire policy on business activities. Indeed, with no census until 1801 and access to little data beyond customes and excise duties and then income tax revenues from 1799, the government was not placed to know how the economy was developing other than by occasional reportage from MPs, journalists and travellers.

Industrial intervention by government in Japan's economy during the last 50 years was piecemeal and less concerted or successful than is often allowed by western enthusiasts for dirigiste causes - see eg Martin Fransman: The Market and Beyond; CUP (1990). The auto industry, one of Japan's undoubted success stories, fought off concerted attempts at intervention by the Ministry of International Tade and Industry (MITI) in the 1960s, and consumer electronics, another success story, was largely left to the intensely competitive home market where any intervention would have risked charges of partiality. While I am unsure exactly what prompted the concerted attempt by Japan's consumer electronics companies to launch a new world 8-bit standard for home computers based on MSX in the mid 1980s, it was conspicuously a miserable failure and hardly the model dirigiste enthusiasts would want to trail.

What can be argued in Japan's case is the contributing factor to productivity of a well-educated workforce by global standards and the importance of company cross-shareholdings, negotiated long-term supply contracts with satellite suppliers, a focus on quality control to facilitate just-in-time component deliveries and highly geared companies dependent on a bank-based capital market, one of the outcomes of which has been a banking system rendered unstable by inordinate percentages of "non-performing" loans on bank balance sheets. Given the outcome, that doesn't seem an attractive model to emulate.

On reflection, in Japan's case, I should have added to factors contributing to its high growth performance the notoriously high propensity to save of households and a seriously under-valued exchange rate for much of the period since WW2.

To David Thomson,

I didn't think this was going to be the place for yet another ideological statement, but you seem to insist.

Berger has stood the test of time in your eyes. It seems to me, however, that a class intended to prompt thought and learned discussion cannot take your view, or Berger's, as the final statement. That would sort of miss the point. That is why I suggest looking for the least convenient circumstances (for Berger) as a test. I thought that's how these things were done. I have no particular beef with Berger. I just used him as an example. If the class is a history of thought, rather than just capitalist thought, then Berger needs balancing because there is more to the history of economic thought than capitalism.

Bob Briant, thanks for getting things back on track.

"It seems to me, however, that a class intended to prompt thought and learned discussion cannot take your view, or Berger's, as the final statement."

I don't recall citing Peter Berger as the final word on anything. Moreover, his fifty propositions can be useful for generating vigorous discussions. Also, are you possibly saying that David Landes is a more non-ideological thinker than Peter Berger?

"If the class is a history of thought, rather than just capitalist thought, then Berger needs balancing because there is more to the history of economic thought than capitalism."

I agree and recommended Berger's book as only one of many that might be considered of value. Nonetheless, I hope the emphasis is placed on Capitalism. Why spend an inordinate amount of time on the losers?

>Why spend an inordinate amount of time on the losers?
As cheerleaders are apt to get carried away with enthusiasm we might just learn something from thoughtful critics. A cherished quote from George Orwell: "Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent , industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous, and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph." [Nineteen Eighty-four, Part II, chapter 9]

Is this an "Intro" to economic history? Perhaps it should also make the point of addressing some of the things that most undergrad students "know" but may not have thought about. A few examples: 1)The stock market crash of 1929 caused the depression. 2)World War II ended the depression. (and the corollaries: Stock market anticipates the economy; war is good for the economy) 3) The Great Depression was a unique event in history 4) Russian communism failed because they weren't capitalists. 5) The US is rich because we ARE capitalists. (and corollaries: democracy is about capitalism) 6) The US has better health care and better universities than the rest of the world because they aren't subsidized by the state. You get the idea, please add to this list other tidbits of common knowledge.

Other ideas for historical discussion might include: 1) Can we assess the economic impact of catastrophic disease such as the Black Plague, the flu epidemic of 1917-18 and AIDS in modern Africa? 2)What historic patterns might we see (or be seeing) repeat themselves in India and China or other rapidly expanding economies?

And, of course, what predictive value does a study of history give us? Can we see any past patterns that resemble what we expect in the future, such as the retirement boom?

OK, so you never did answer those questions about dates and regions covered in the course. Tsk, tsk.

I doubt I can recommend much in the way of mainstream economic history with which you are not already familiar. I do have a few ideas that come from right next door to economics, though. Trouble is, an intro survey course may not have time for excursions elsewhere. Nevertheless:

“The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations”, Max Weber

“The Political Economy of Merchant Empires: State Power and World Trade 1350-1750” James Tracy

Something in English along the lines of W. N. A. Klever’s “Archologie va de Economie”, a review of economic theory in ancient Greek thinking. It helps make clear, among other things, that positive economics is a relatively modern endeavor.