Cliometrics as Economics Imperialism: Across the Watershed: Critical Reconstructions of Political Economy, Volume 3

Fine, Benjamin

Abstract

In Cliometrics as Economics Imperialism, Ben Fine traces the cliometric revolution, from before its emergence through three phases of the new, the newer and the newest economic history. These phases are shown to correspond to those of “economics imperialism”, the colonisation of topics and fields by mainstream economics, moving successively through as if there were perfectly working markets, as if imperfectly working markets, and these combined plus arbitrary inclusion of other variables.
The text draws upon case studies, for example of the putative eighteenth-century consumer revolution, Douglass North, path dependence, and the British coal industry, and through exposing the reduction of economic theory and economic history deployed within them and giving rise to a corresponding reduction in the presence of the social, the historical and political economy.

Citation

Fine, B. (2023). Cliometrics as Economics Imperialism: Across the Watershed: Critical Reconstructions of Political Economy, Volume 3. Brill Academic Publishers. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004689275

• Book Type: Monograph
• Publication Date: Nov 27, 2023
• Deposit Date: May 21, 2025
• Publisher: Brill Academic Publishers
• Series Title: Studies in Critical Social Sciences
• Series Number: 273
• Series ISSN: 1573-4234
• ISBN: 9789004689275; 9789004689268
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004689275