This article presents some evidence that the Greenbook forecast systematically, albeit modestly, overpredicted CPI inflation during the tightening period. Still, the success of the episode stemmed importantly from the decision by Greenspan and the FOMC to increase the policy rate to a level deemed restrictive for most of 1995. The end result was the avoidance of a recession and an eventual slowing in inflation and inflation expectations.
Archive for June 11th, 2025
Trautwein’s Challenge to the History of Economics
June 11, 2025In 2017, Prof Hans-Michael Trautwein in his Presidential Address to European Society questioned marginalisation of history of economic thought and the state of economics:
……the main reason why historians of thought do not get much of a hearing these days is the marginalisation of their field within economics. This deplorable development, too, is a result of increased specialisation in combination with tecTrautwein hnical progress and the global standardisation of professional practices. There are now so many skills of modelling and measuring to acquire that most economists consider the opportunity costs of having the history of thought represented in departments, course programmes and core journals as unaffordable. In my function as president of the European Society for the History of Economic Thought (ESHET), it is my duty to argue to the contrary: The trend of specialisation tends to increase the opportunity costs of neglecting the history of economic thought (HET). In the following, I will show how the very same trend that contributed to the marginalisation of our field is now increasing the demand for HET.
Prof John Davis of Univ of Amsterdam in this article revisists the Trautwein challenge:
Hans-Michael Trautwein’s presidential address to the European Society raised provocative questions regarding the nature of current economics that should concern not just historians of economics but economists as well (Trautwein, 2017). Are the processes driving current research in economics creating a greater and greater specialization in subjects and economic thinking that is fragmenting and disunifying the field? Here I discuss Trautwein’s question and his answer to it particularly as bear on the future status and responsibilities of the history of economics as a field within economics.
First, I give an account of what is involved in research specialization in science and economics.
Second, I place increasing specialization in the subjects investigated in economics in an historical context, specifically, the postwar WWII history of the field.
Third, I discuss Trautwein’s recommendations regarding a possible special, future role for the field of history of economics.
Last, I offer praise for Trautwein for his perceptiveness and leadership as both an economist and historian of economics, and frame this in terms of what his insights can mean for thinking about the state of pluralism in economics.
Mostly Economics 
