Mr Patrick Wells

This course is available on the MSc in Economic History, MSc in Economic History (Research), MSc in Economics and Philosophy, MSc in Global Economic History (Erasmus Mundus), MSc in International and World History (LSE & Columbia), MSc in Philosophy of the Social Sciences and MSc in Political Economy of Late Development. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

The course aim is to understand how the nature of economics changed from the verbally argued accounts of political economy and moral philosophy in the 18th century to become a technical social science by the end of the 20th century.

The course will explore the long-term changes over two hundred years in how economists came to know things about the economy by examining the history of their notion of the laws of economics, their analytical practices, and the evidence they used. Primary texts, chosen from a variety of European and American authors, will provide material for the study of these changes. Secondary literature will provide theoretical resources from history and philosophy of science to help analyse, understand and assess these changes in the nature of economics as a science.

20 hours of seminars in the MT.

20 hours over MT, mainly 2hour seminars, with an occasional lecture within that time slot. 

Students on this course will have a reading week in Week 6, in line with departmental policy.

Students will be expected to write two essays or equivalent pieces of written work.

The main domain of the course material is explained in "Economics" in T.M.Porter and D.Ross The Cambridge History of Science, Vol 7, The Modern Social Sciences, pp 275-305 (Cambridge University Press), while a key secondary text is Mary Morgan’s “The world in the model: how economists work and think” (Cambridge University Press 2012).

A very readable introduction to the history of economics is Robert Heilbroner’s “The Worldly Philosophers” (various editions, Penguin); a more detailed background text is Henry Spiegel's “The Growth of Economic Thought” (various editions, Duke University Press).

Full reading lists will be given out at the beginning of the course.

Essay (100%, 5000 words) in the LT.