Bruce Caldwell - Why Economics Needs the History of Thought

interview by Perry G. Mehrling

Institute for New Economic Thinking
June 30, 2011

Who is going to teach fields like economic methodology and the history of economic thought if these fields aren't taught to current graduate students? Bruce Caldwell is filling this hole in the graduate curriculum. The Hayek scholar is ramping-up the Center for the History of Political Economy at Duke University to educate a generation of future professors – a generation that is well-versed in the history of economic thought, and that communicates with other social sciences and the humanities. These are the seeds of new economic thinking.

Bruce Caldwell is a Research Professor of Economics and the Director of the Center for the History of Political Economy at Duke University. He is the author of Beyond Positivism: Economic Methodology in the 20th Century. For the past two decades his research has focused on the multi-faceted writings of the Nobel prize-winning economist and social theorist Friedrich A. Hayek. Since 2002 he has been the General Editor of The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek, a collection of Hayek's writings.

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