The New History of Capitalism and the Methodologies of Economic History

I am happy to announce that my paper with Judge Glock of the Cicero Institute has been published online by Essays in Economic and Business History. The paper was an invited contribution regarding the New History of Capitalism (NHC) and its purported contributions to understanding economic history. Judge and I argue that the NHC does not deserve the “N” in its acronym as it simply attempts to put new varnish on the same views as those advanced by Karl Polanyi in the 1940s (namely the view that economic rationality as taught in economics course is not historically continuous — economic rationality is something new and caused by capitalism). However, we do point out that economists must stop making it impossible to dialogue with historians and that interchange between both groups is necessary and possible. In fact, we argue that the rise of NHC is the result of the absence of this interchange between both groups.