Please enjoy this Interview with Professor Jim Cicarelli on the process of
writing the book:
A History of Economic Thought in America:
Mainstreams and Cross-Currents.
Date & Time of Interview: 2pm, Tuesday, January 5, 2010.
Where did the idea to begin writing the book come
from? I first thought of writing the book years ago, and have been working on it now for five years. The
last comprehensive study of the concept had been done way back in the 1940s, so I thought that a book on this
topic needed to be tackled. Truly, there’s a vacuum out there in the literature.
How are you partitioning the work between yourself and
your co-author, Steven Antler? I am focusing on the years prior to the 20th century, while
Steve is covering the years from 1900 AD to the present. Each of us is always talking to the other about what we’re
doing, in order to get cross-fertilization of ideas. Steve teaches part-time in the Economics department at
Roosevelt, while I am a full-time professor of Economics.
I am discovering the process of finding material for
America’s early days (to 1899 AD) to be quite complicated. This is due, in part, to the fact that not only aboriginal
Native Americans, but also much of the 18th and 19thcentury American citizenry, could not read or write.
In fact, the formal economic writers of these times were usually clergy or journalists, as opposed to the
merchants and farmers who were actually engaged in economic dealings.
Is the overall scope of the research more biographical in
nature or does it focus more on major intellectual schools of thought? The book will include
biographical sketches of selected individuals as side-notes, in order to make the thinkers seem more
three-dimensional. However, it will largely focus on both ‘mainstream’ schools of economics and various right-
and left-wing ‘cross-current’ philosophies. The idea of the book is to give a holistic picture of
economic thought in the style of ‘you can’t make cloth if all the threads are lying in the same direction’.
How have you used the Library in doing your background
research? I have used the library extensively to trace the history of ideas, finding it indispensable to
my research. As I have become more proficient in the study of economic anthropology & economic
archaeology, I’ve learned about current speculation on preliterate aboriginal economic thought and about how
economists have gleaned the economic thought of illiterate European cultures.
Will you be writing a few scholarly articles related to
this book? I have produced an article, called “Economic Thought Among American Aboriginals Prior to 1492”,
which has been accepted for publication in The American Journal of Economics and Sociology.
What are some unique, interesting angles you are pursuing
in your writing? I am trying to make the survey more ‘colorful’ by highlighting aboriginal economics,
women economists, and thoughtful commentary on the left & right ‘cross-currents’.
For an aboriginal case study, I find the story of the Cahokia Mounds, located in Collinsville, IL, to be just
unbelievably fascinating. For the feminine angle, I have found that Katharine Coman wrote the lead article in
the very first issue of the American Economic Review in 1911. So right from the get-go, women
were contributors to formal economic thinking in America. More recently, Steve has discovered that the ‘Supply Side’
economic current was actually created by journalists who became highly-influential in American
political scene of the 1980s and 1990s, even though they didn’t appear in the major professional economic
journals.
Who are some of the more interesting economic thinkers
that you’ve discovered so far? Steve has studied Irving Fisher, a colorful character, the
‘Grandfather of Modern Economics’; John Bates Clark, the ‘Dean of American Economists’; and Frank Knight,
a prominent economist of the 1930s and 1940s who hailed from a Central Illinois farm.
Final Thoughts? Steve and I are about one-fifth
of the way through the first draft. It’s like building a pyramid, the Suez Canal, the Erie Canal – I can see why people didn’t
do this before!
Steven Antler maintains a blog called:
“EconoPundit: Economic News and Views” .
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