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| Karl-Gunnar Persson is professor in Economic history at University of Copenhagen |
Realizing that the working paper series of the European Historical Economics Society is approaching its 100th publication makes me remember a fringe meeting at the International Economic History Association congress in Milan 1994.
A fairly small group, just
about a significant fraction of 100, associated with the EHES met to discuss
the possibility of launching a new journal devoted to European economic
history. The group was evenly split in pessimists and optimists, those who argued
that time was not ripe to fill a journal with good articles and those who
believed that the creation of a new journal would attract young researchers to
the subject and eventually fill the pages with good stuff. In the end the
optimists prevailed, that is those who
implicitly argued that there is a lot of endogeneity out there. The journal is
now in its 20th year of publishing and has established a good reputation. (The formative years of our society and the
European Review of Economic History is
told here ).
I was not involved in the launching of the working paper series, but I
believe there was some discussion
whether it was a viable venture, that is, whether time was ripe or
not. And even the optimists, I suppose,
would be surprised by the instant success. With a society holding a congress
every second year and with members actively organizing workshops, with so many
research student being attracted to economic history during the last 10 to 15
years the preconditions, propelled by
endogeneity, were present or were made present. With a twist of a famous quote
(probably wrongly attributed to the historian
Arnold Toynbee) the history of the EHES is just one damned good thing
after another.
This blog post was written by Karl Gunnar Persson, professor in Economic History at University of Copenhagen.
The first hundered EHES working papers are found on this link:
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