Is history of economics what historians economic of economic thought do? A quantitative investigation

This paper presents a quantitative investigation into the history of economic thought (het). Building on previous work (Marcuzzo 2008; 2012), we propose an empirical study with the aim of describing the dynamics of changes in het in recent years, detecting three trends: 1) a sort of ‘stepping down from the shoulders of giants’, namely a move towards studies of ‘minor’ figures and/or economists from a more recent past; 2) the blossoming of archival research into unpublished work and correspondence; 3) less theory-laden investigations, connecting intellectual circles, linking characters and events. Using data from Econlit we show the evolution of the overall publication of het articles (1955-2013) and of het fully or partially specialized journals (1993-2013); for the latter, by devising proxies which are amenable to quantitative assessment, we demonstrate that there is some evidence to support these claims.