Those readers with literary pretensions might recognise the allusion to François Villon’s well-known poem. The line of course that forms the work’s refrain: ‘Mais où sont les neiges d’antan!’ ‘Oh, where are the snows of yesteryear!’.
End AbstractHistory of economic thought may have been George Stigler’s first love, but he turned out to be something of a feckless lover as the years rolled by. (It raises the question of why at crucial moments Stigler obviously didn’t seem to give a feck.) At times, his attitude to the field, which greatly benefited from his efforts, parallels the closed-minded perspective of the mechanically gifted but entirely cantankerous Henry Ford. These moments reveal an academic who considers his passion to be something of a guilty pleasure, like someone catching up on his macramé during an academic conference. The pursuit has hardly been (for many decades) a field that garners even a modicum of respect.
… the low state of repute in which the subject has fallen in the United States discourages me from pursuing that interest any further. People positively jeer at you when you state your speciality … it should be a side line, they argue. (Mark Blaug letter to George Stigler, December 20, 1963)
Despite his eminence in the field, that George Stigler in the 1970s did nothing to resist the subject’s (history of economic thought) permanent termination from graduate education at the University of Chicago should hardly come as a shock. Intermixed with his sense of guilty pleasure is a continuing ambivalence of attitude with which he surrounded the subject.
1 Whatever his innermost reflections and emotions might be at any given moment, Stigler was never one to hint at, let alone exude, any degree of sentimentality. His heart was never carelessly displayed on his sleeve. Though it is true that while at Columbia, he supervised Mark Blaug’s dissertation on Ricardo, equally clear is his continued unwillingness to actually promote the subject, whether through making a conscious decision or by simple neglect alone.
2 However, he clearly dismissed the importance of such
knowledge as forming a vital, or even useful, substratum of an accomplished, academic economist.
3Some historians of economics – Schumpeter is an eminent representative – believe that an understanding of the evolution of a science helps to understand its present structure. This claim may be conceded and restated as the plausible hypothesis that correct knowledge never has a negative marginal product. Nevertheless, one need not read in the history of economics – that is, past economics – to master present economics. (Stigler 1982: 107)4
In Stigler’s actual work in the field, he seemed incapable, at moments, of preventing ideological concerns from seeping into his research. His work, scientific or otherwise can be evaluated, without too much strain, as a continuing defence of market
efficiency . The core of his analytical framework rested unreservedly on a base of rational
decision-making .
5 Doing so, allowed him to equate consumer
sovereignty with individual
freedom and
liberty . This ploy necessitated a determined rejection of any conflicting influences, whether psychological, historical or political. In this sense, history for Stigler was indeed bunk.
6In fact Smith’s professional work of psychology (in the Theory of Moral Sentiments) bears scarcely any relationship to his economics, and this tradition of independence of economics from psychology has persisted despite continued efforts from Jennings (1855) to Herbert Simon and George Katona to destroy it. (Stigler 1965: 28)
He revered Adam Smith as the alpha and omega of economics for recognising that narrow self-interest, when attached to competitive forces, led to unintended but desirable societal ends. Stigler was nonetheless disappointed at Smith’s reluctance to carry the campaign to its logical end.
7 (‘Well, you know my argument is the opposite? No, he [Stigler] was sort of critical of Adam Smith in a way that I didn’t think was justified”. Conversation with Ronald Coase, October 1997.) The insistence that everything had to reduce to
self-interested motivations , including in particular political markets, separated him from his version of the unarguable superiority of Adam Smith’s insights. To a clear and certain extent, Stigler remained dumbfounded at his hero’s inexplicable lapse.
We’re talking about the political world, the political market as opposed to the economic one. But in interpreting the political market, George very consistently, interprets the political market as a resolution of opposing self-interests and tended to give very little attention to the extent to which it arose out of the desire of the people involved in government to promote the public interest . (Conversation with Milton Friedman, August 1997)
Apart from his own work, George Stigler was grudging in his praise for, and even dismissive of, the field in which he himself had so extensively contributed. In his evaluation, History of Economic Thought harboured more insidious danger than the
Postman Pat children’s series, but lacked its scholarly impact. If young economists were not to become fatally distracted by mulling the ambiguities thrown up by a careful examination of the subject’s history, then the only real prophylactic was complete abstinence. He was then perhaps heartened in his later years by the increasing ignorance of most economists when it came to an understanding of the history and evolution of their profession.
The young economist who reads some of the early controversies with care will surely learn one lesson, and he may learn two. The inevitable lesson is that after studying previous controversies one cannot become quite so engaged in the current controversies – one cannot become quite so convinced of either the correctness or the importance of one’s new ideas. The more subtle lesson is that it does not pay to learn the first lesson: the temperate, restrained, utterly fair-minded treatment of one’s own theories does a disservice to these theories as well as to one’s professional status and salary. The scientist is loath to buy new models which have not been well advertised. I therefore accept the proposition of Bishop Stubbs that the study of history probably makes a man wise, and surely makes him sad. (Stigler 1988: 111)
George Stigler apparently remained quite comfortable throughout his career in permanently exiling the field described by the history of thought to the dank anterooms of economic research. Despite his own distinguished efforts, starting with his Northwestern MBA
8 and relentlessly exploring noted unresolved issues in the field, Stigler remained ambivalent of its worth. He even showed a willingness to emblazon it with a warning label sufficient to deter the unwary who might wander into these unrewarding thickets, ‘abandon hope all ye who enter here’. One does wonder, in light of his treatment of economists long buried, whether George Stigler was really Adam Smith’s best friend or even much of a supporter of History of Economic Thought.
There is a well-known story, still worth retelling, about a word game George invented for young children. He would give them, he said, a million dollars if they correctly answered three questions. The first, “Who was buried in Grant’s tomb?” and the second, “Whose head was on the Lincoln penny?” inspired great confidence in the child for a prospective life of luxury and leisure. Invariably, all hopes were dashed with the third question: “Who was Adam Smith’s best friend?” Except one time the son of a friend responded, “Why, you are, Uncle George”. (Rosen 1993: 809–810)
