Re: Your Comments

[pdavidso <pdavidso@xxxxxxx>]

>===== Original Message From "Michael A. Bernstein" <mbernstein@xxxxxxxx>
=====
>Dear Professor Davidson
>
>We have never met -- so I do hope you will excuse this "bolt out of the
blue."

I do not mind
>
>I have long been a great admirer of your work and of the efforts you have
>led at Tennessee to maintain alternative approaches to economics.  All the
>more reason, therefore, to be chagrined when I learned, through email
>messages from various colleagues across the country, of your critical
>comments regarding my work on the history of the American economics
>profession.  I have, in particular, been sent two quotes of yours, to the
>effect that:  1) my arguments about the impact of WWII on the profession
>are "historically inaccurate;" and 2) that you wish I had read Roy
>Weintraub's recent book.
>


>Might I just mention, Professor Davidson, that the archival documentation
>in my book is extensive and thorough?  You are, of course, more than
>entitled to your opinion of my interpretation of the evidence and of my
>overall arguments.  But the historical detail in my book is something I
>stand by -- indeed, it is, in my view, the book's core contribution.
>

Dear Micheal:

My comments were in regard to some comments attributed to you in an article in
the CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION and had NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR BOOK.  The
inaccuracies that I suggested had to do with the implication of one the
comments, attributed to you in the CHRONICLE article, that ever since WWII,
the government had provided an enorous infusion of funds for developing
mathematical models in various disciplines --- I believe this is inaccurate
and that there was a significant reduction in government funds for this work
between the end of WWII and Sputnick in the late 1950s. In my comments I
reported on my own experience as a biochemist in 1950 at the University of
Tennessee as to the lack of a large infusion of funds -- but I could have also
mentioned that in 1955 Simon Kuznets left the University of Pennsylvania
because they could not match a salary offer from Johns Hopkins-- an offer
that, if I remember correctly, did not exceed $7000.


Also if you have read Roy's book you would have noted that the Cowles
Commission in the early 1950s was influential in foisting mathematics onto an
economics profession that still had a lot of non mathematical types after
WWII.

And as Roy points out his own father continued to publish important articles
-- that were not very mathematical in nature --in the major journals until the
mid 1950s.




>As for your wish that I had read Roy's recent book -- I have -- although it
>was not available when I wrote my book.  But more to the point, do you not
>find it ironic that you would express this "anxiety" when Roy himself has
>such a powerful and laudatory "blurb" on the jacket of my book?  Roy, I
>believe, is quite sensitive to the general argument I advanced in the book
>-- that the impacts of wartime experience had as powerful an influence on
>the evolution of the "mainstream" of the economics discipline in the U.S.
>as anything else.

That is different than the CHRONICLE comment which suggests continual funding
of math in disciplies from the beginning of WWII till today without any pause.

>
>Again, I hope you will forgive this intervention from cyberspace.  I send
>it with all due respect and with the goal of provoking thought and
discussion.

I find nothing  offensive with your response. I hope it does encourage further
discussion.

Paul
>
>with best wishes and regards . . . yours . . . Michael Bernstein
>
>_____________________________________________________________________________
__
>Michael A. Bernstein
>Professor of History and Associated Faculty-Member in Economics
>Department of History 0104
>University of California, San Diego
>9500 Gilman Drive
>La Jolla, California  92093-0104 [USA]
>Voice:   858-534-1070
>Fax:       858-534-7283
>Email:    mbernstein@xxxxxxxx
>http://ucsd.edu/history

Paul Davidson
Editor, Journal of Post Keynesian Economics
University of Tennessee
SMC 503
Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-0550
phone # (561)369-1951; fax #(561)369-1951;
email pdavidson@xxxxxxx
http://econ.bus.utk.edu/davidsonextra/Davidson.html