THE HISTORY OF THE HISTORY OF ECONOMICS SOCIETY

Beginning in the 1960s, subfields claimed a central place in the production and dissemination of economic knowledge. Generalists were replaced by economists who specialized in the study of international economics, public economics, labor economics, or econometrics. New infrastructure emerged, including field-specific societies and field-specific journals (Backhouse and Cherrier 2017; Cherrier 2017; Cherrier and Rebours 2023; Desmarais-Tremblay, Johnson, and Sturn 2023; Desmarais-Tremblay and Svorenčik 2021; Svorenčik 2021). Some of the earliest movers were those interested in social choice and the political economy of governance. In 1963, a coalition of economists and political economists established the Committee for Non-Market Decision Making; a preliminary conference led to the creation of the Public Choice Society, an annual conference, and a specialized journal, Public Choice (Buchanan 2003; Medema 2011). 1 Public Choice was quickly followed by the Journal of Human Resources (1965), the Journal of Economic Education (1969), the Journal of International Economics (1971), the Journal of Public Economics (1972), the Journal of Econometrics (1973), the Journal of Urban Economics (1974), the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management (1974), and the Journal of Comparative Economics (1977), all attached to newly formed societies and associations.