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By DOUGLASS C. NORTH*
It is customary to date the beginning of the new economic history from a joint meeting of the Economic History Association and the National Bureau of Economic Research conference on income and wealth in the fall of 1957. The conference was devoted to the presentation of papers analyzing in quantitative terms the history of the economies of the United States and Canada. Two papers by Alfred Conrad and John Meyer on methodology (1957) and on the economics of slavery (1958) were milestones in initiating this new approach to economic history. Cliometrics not only quickly took over the field of economic history in the United States, but also captured the imagination and enthusiastic support of economists in general. As a result the demand for new economic historians by economics departments in the 1960's was flourishing. Now, with 40 years of perspective, what can be said about the contribution of the new economic history to our understanding of the past and to economics as a discipline?
Writing on this subject exactly 20 years ago it was relatively easy for me to summarize both the contributions and limitations of the new approach (North, 1977). The contributions were the application of a systematic body of theory and sophisticated quantitative methods to the field. "As a consequence... the new economic history has succeeded in overturning or at least specifying much more precisely much of the traditional historical explanation that has been made about man's recent economic past." (p. 192) The limitations were those imposed by the body of theory used: neoclassical theory. That theory assumed a frictionless world with no explicit role for institutions or government. While I could point to some exceptions, I had to conclude with Donald McCloskey (1976) that economists were not buying: "[T ]he revolutionary spirit which infused the little band of scholars who met annually in the dead of winter in the frozen wastes of Lafayette, Indiana, in the early 1960's is clearly lacking today [1977] ... The problem is straightforward. Most of the new economic historians are still attempting to ape their colleagues....