The Rise and Fall of Economic History at MIT

Abstract

This paper recalls the unity of economics and economics at MIT before the Second World War, and their divergence thereafter. Economic history at MIT reached its peak in the 1970s with three teachers of the subject to graduates and undergraduates alike. It declined until economic history vanished both from the faculty and the graduate program around 2010. The cost of this decline to current education and scholarship is suggested at the end of the narrative. This paper was written for a conference on the history of the MIT economics department held at Duke University in early 2013.