(WP 2025-01) Trautwein's Challenge to the History of Economics

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.