THE STATE OF ECONOMIC HISTORY.

This article focuses on two points: (1) that the quality of research in economic history is generally very poor and that the economics profession must take a large share of the blame and (2) that the new economic history falls short of the mark in remedying this problem. Despite the fact that a good deal of economic history in the United States is taught in economics departments, there appears to be some schizophrenia on the part of economists between the way they look at the quality of research in economic history and the way in which they regard the research of colleagues engaged in other fields of economics. If economists were to apply the same critical standards to economic history that they apply to the rest of the field of economics, very little of today's economic history would be recognized as high-quality research. There appears to be an implicit notion that the criteria by which we judge economic history should differ from those used in judging economics. If so, then we should turn the field back to the historians, who at least write with charm and style.