HOPE and the Journal Literature in the History of Economic Thought

Abstract

comparisons between HOPE'S acceptances and articles in the history of economic thought in other journals over the period 1963 to 1980. 1. See Hamet Zuckerman and Robert K. Merton, 'Patterns of evaluation in science: institutionalisation, structure and function o f the referee system,' Minerva 9 (Jan. I97 I): 66-100, at Table 1 , p. 76. There is some evidence that rejection rates for 'core' journals, such as the journal of a nationwide professional association, tend to be higher than average for journals in the field. Ibid. 75-77. For the American Economic Review, 1960-79, the rejection rate was consistently 80 percent or above. 'Report o f the Managing Editor,' American Economic Review 70, no. 2 (May 1980): 455. An even higher rate is said to apply currently to the Economic Journal.

Research Priorities in the History of Economics Forty Years Later

“…The stock was small indeed. “Submissions reflect little attention to the development of data or the tools of the economist (methods, specific techniques); or to the interaction of economic theory and policy; or to the sociology of the discipline” (De Marchi and Lodewijks 1983, p. 325). Instead, the papers that had been submitted to HOPE were mainly of two kinds: those that told the history of the discipline through the ideas of Great Men; and those that sought to uncover the earliest articulations of currently accepted theory.…”

Dead Men Tell no Tales

“…The relative decline of the history of economic thought as a specialty in the discipline of economics has been the focus of considerable concern among historians of thought in recent years as evidenced by the emergence of a substantial body of literature devoted to examining this issue (Stigler 1965a(Stigler , 1982Goodwin 1980;Coats 1983;and de Marchi and Lodewijks 1983). Although the number of articles published about the history of economic thought has experienced slow but fairly steady growth over the past three decades, the relative share of the academic journal market of such contributions has steadily declined.…”

Impact Factor Pressures, Scientific Practices, and the Place of Survey Articles in the History of Economics

“…Here, we provide here a very broad working definition of survey articles. For a discussion of the difficulties of defining survey articles seeRestrepo Forero (2003).6 See for exampleDe Marchi and Lodewijks (1983) orCoats (1983) for earlier examples of surveys in the history of economics. The survey episodes in the podcast "Smith and Marx Walk into a bar" is another interesting example of contemporary surveys in the history of economics (see in particular episodes 5 and 14: https://hetpodcast.libsyn.com).…”