Introduction: Roads to Economic Knowledge: The Epistemic Virtues of Travel across the History of Thought

Abstract

In order to exam ine the his tor i cal rela tions between travel and eco nomic knowl edge, we, as edi tors of this spe cial issue, decided in 2019 to orga nize a con fer ence at the University of Lausanne to con trib ute to a grow ing lit er a ture in the his tory and phi los o phy of eco nom ics that exam ines the man i fold rela tions between econ o mists, their trav els, and the devel op ment of the eco nomic dis ci pline. 1 A mas ter course on the inter na tional dif fu sion of eco nomic ideas at the Institute of Political Studies at the University of Lausanne, for which Harro Maas consulted Mauro Boianovsky and some of the con trib u tors to this spe cial issue, was the direct impe tus for a ded i cated con fer ence. We could not have known, of course, that the still ongo ing pan demic gave a dif fer ent urgency to the topic and caused a