Spleen: the failures of the cliometric school

Fenoaltea, Stefano (2018): Spleen: the failures of the cliometric school.

Abstract

This paper argues that we cliometricians have failed as economists, because we did not drag the profession out of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth; that we have failed as historians, because we do not take measurement seriously, and misapprehend “the data”; and that we failed signally as economic historians, because we backcast “GDP” as if it measured gross domestic product.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: economics, economic history, cliometrics
• Subjects: A - General Economics and Teaching > A1 - General Economics > A10 - General; B - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches > B4 - Economic Methodology > B40 - General; N - Economic History > N0 - General > N01 - Development of the Discipline: Historiographical; Sources and Methods

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