The History of Economic Thought and Mainstream Economics: A Long-Term Analysis

The aim of our contribution is, overall, to shed some light on the increasing difficulties experienced by historians of economic thought in having their role recognised both in terms of research activity and in their contribution to economic debate. By contrast, we strongly believe that “economics without [the] history of economic thought is a body without soul” (Roncaglia, 2014, p. 8). That is why, after a preliminary introduction to the role of the history of economic thought (HET) in economics, we concentrate on the new challenges stemming from the bibliometric evaluation of research in economics. In this context, we refer to the results of the Italian national research assessments (held in 2011 and in 2016), analysing the biases in the evaluation of HET journals, and HET articles in general. Moreover, we seek to show how poorly designed indicators, such as journal impact factors (JIFs) and citation counts, can have negative consequences mainly in terms of pluralism. In doing so, we link our analysis to many contributions made by Cristina Marcuzzo during her career, both as researcher and as ambassador of the economic profession, at the national and international level.