Some historian of economics had to do it. Economics in the Rear-View Mirror is proud to announce the creation of a new portrait collection: Economists Wearing Bowties. Bookmark that page to follow as I add to the collection. We begin with the poster wunderkind of bowtied economists, Paul A. Samuelson.
Today, 8 May 2018, Economics in the Rear-view Mirror celebrates its third anniversary. As your faithful scribe and curator of this digital collection of archival artifacts from the history of economics, I am happy to report that the project is on right on schedule, and I have been able to add artifacts at a rate of 250 per year. Here is the catalogue of (at this moment exactly 750) items.
The following table lists the top twenty postings/pages ranked by page-views for year three. As one might expect, names like Schumpeter, Hayek, Samuelson, Friedman and Solow are the big draws for what is after all a pretty nerdy boutique blog. It is my hope to entice visitors to check out some of the 19th and early 20th century artifacts and to help expand the market for the young historians of economics who have been generous in their likes and retweets over at the Twitter and Facebook outposts of Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.
While it should be obvious, let me explicitly say that the work here is strictly and solely motivated by educational and research purposes and that this blog is not in any way a commercial enterprise. It is merely a publicly viewable log of my ongoing research into the evolution of undergraduate and graduate education in economics for (approximately) the century before I began my own economics education. Beware ye who may attempt to exploit for non-educational-and-research purposes my good-faith in remaining well within the fair-use of material to which copyright might rightfully be claimed!
The second item in the series of Curator’s Favorites is the list of reading assignments extracted from Frank W. Fetter’s student notes from 1923-24 when he took Frank W. Taussig’s course “Economics 11”, Economic Theory. This list too has links to the individual items on the reading list.
The first of the series of Curator’s Favorites is the list of items “Recommended Teacher’s Library of Economics” put together by J. Laurence Laughlin and published in 1887.
The collection of artifacts here at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror has grown sufficiently large that part of my self-imposed curation duties now include adding postings to link back to some earlier postings that perhaps newer visitors and subscribers have yet to discover.
Today I add the list of reading assignments extracted from Frank W. Fetter’s student notes from 1923-24 when he took Frank W. Taussig’s course “Economics 11”, Economic Theory. This list too has links to the individual items on the reading list. It was first posted June 12, 2015 when ERVM was barely a month-old blog, since that time it has attracted 41 page visits. It is too good to miss, IMHO.
Another such underused resource and the first of the series of Curator’s Favorites is the list of items “Recommended Teacher’s Library of Economics” put together by J. Laurence Laughlin and published in 1887.
The Rare Book Reading Room of Economics in the Rear-view Mirror proudly announces the addition of a work that was written by Copernicus sometime before April 1526. It represents an early statement of the quantity theory of money.
Latin and Polish translation (1854). Beginning p. 563 in Nicolai Copernici Torunensis De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri sex : accedit G. Joachimi Rhetici Narratio prima, cum Copernici nonnullis scriptis minoribus nunc primum collectis, ejusque vita. Warsaw: Strąbski, 1854.
Latin and French translation (1864). Traictie de la première invention des monnoies de Nicole Oresme; textes français et latin d’après les manuscrits de la Bibliothèque impeériale, et Traité de la monnoie de Copernic; texte latin et traduction française. Publiés et annotés par M. L. Wolowski. Paris, Guillaumin et cie., 1864. Download entire book at archive.org.
Latin and German translation (1978). Die Geldlehre des Nicolaus Copernicus. Texte, Übersetzungen Kommentare. Berlin (East): Akademie-Verlag, 1978.
Latin and English translation with images of an early copy of the original (Copernican Academic Portal, Nicolaus Copernicus Thorunensis of Nicolaus Copernicus University). There exists three known such copies according to Leszek Zygner’s introductory page. Images; transcription; translation (by Edward Rosen).
Image Source: Copernican Academic Portal
The collection of artifacts here at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror has grown sufficiently large that part of my self-imposed curation duties now include adding postings to link back to some earlier postings that perhaps newer visitors and subscribers have yet to discover.
One such underused resource in my opinion is the list of items “Recommended Teacher’s Library of Economics” put together by J. Laurence Laughlin and published in 1887. To date, Laughlin’s List has received only 53 page visits since being posted in August, 2015. What makes the transcription a true resource for historians of economics is that nearly all the references given by Laughlin now have links. Thus in that single posting we have a virtual library of economics that would have been an economics professor’s pride at the dawn of graduate education in economics in the United States.
Latest addition to the Economics in the Rear-view Mirror Rare Book Reading Room: a link to the Latin original of Daniel Bernoulli’s paper for his solution to the St. Petersburg paradox.
From the English translator’s note: “I am also grateful to Mr. William J. Baumol, Professor of Economics, Princeton University, for his valuable assistance in interpreting Bernoulli’s paper in the light of modern econometrics”.
Visitors must drop down this page to the comments section to enjoy the material shared by Olav Bjerkholt that he found in the Econometrica files regarding the publication of the English translation of the Bernoulli paper. Fabulous stuff!
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Bernoulli, Daniel. Specimen theoriae novae de mensura sortis, Commentarii academiae scientiarum imperialis Petropolitanae. Tomus V. St. Petersburg, 1738, pp. 175-192.
Repository: Natural History Museum Library, London.
German translation by Alfred Pringsheim with introduction by Ludwig Fick. Leipzig: Duncker & Mumblot, 1896.
English translation (link requires access to jstor) by Dr. Louise Sommer published as “Exposition of a New Theory on the Measurement of Risk” in Econometrica, Vol. 22, No. 1 (January, 1954), pp. 23-36.
Image Source: New York City Public Library Reading Room, ca. 1911. From Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.
Yesterday, May 8 (2017) Economics in the Rear-View Mirror celebrated its second anniversary of providing transcriptions of material culled from archives both physical and electronic. These artifacts are relevant, most of the time, to my research project on the history of economic graduate and undergraduate economics in the United States from the late 19th century through the early post-WWII years.
As I did upon the first anniversary of Economics in the Rear-View Mirror, let me provide guests attending this anniversary celebration with a top-ten list of postings (with links!) according to page visits over the course of this second year.
The top two spots were won by none other than Joseph Schumpeter. Indeed both of his postings achieved the identical ranks in the previous top-ten annual list. Chamberlin slipped only from 5th to 6th place in the ranking. All other top-ten items were posted during the past twelve months. It is interesting to note Schumpeter is absolute and relative click-bait, accounting for 40% of last year’s top ten. Samuelson was good for another 30%.
I suppose I should not be surprised that the “Demand” is so much greater for artifacts associated with the giants of the relatively recent past than those artifacts from more distant times associated with much less familiar or even unknown names. I can only encourage visitors to check out the complete catalog of artifacts and sample some of the pre-WWII, indeed 19th century offerings.
P.S. Two popular pages having absolutely nothing to do with the History of Economics: Christmas 2016 and Springtime for Twittler. Both are satirical doggerel written for these times of Trump.
Dear subscribers,
Some of you might wonder about the recent interruption in regular posts here at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror. Not to worry, all is well. First I was on an archival expedition for three weeks. I am currently touring Vietnam. I’ll only be tweeting links to some of the golden oldie posts (@irwincollier) that have attracted the most visitors as well as a few of the underappreciated jewels of the collection.
By mid-April the flow of new content will resume.