The State of Economic History: Credible or Incredible?

Economic History is not the favoured child of its parent disciplines. Economics and history do not vie for their offspring’s attention. Instead, she struggles for favour. Facing decreasing interest, the closure of independent departments, and the erosion of her separate intellectual identity, economic history has contemplated the future with trepidation. Recently, reflections have focussed on bibliometric evidence stimulated by Robert Margo’s hypothesis of integration within economics (Margo, The Integration of Economic History in Economics, 2017; Fernández-de-Pinedo et al., Cliometrica 17:1–22, 2023; Cioni et al., Cliometrica 17:23–40, 2023). Although I summarize the bibliometrics, my aim is not to augment this literature but to dig deeper into the nature of integration. While economic history had little option but to fold itself into economics, I argue that attempted assimilation has exposed it to a methodological revolution involving research designs that ape experimental methods (Angrist and Pischke, Journal of Economic Perspectives 2 (2):3–30, 2010). Compliance with the ‘credibility revolution’ has become the gateway to amalgamation with economics. While integration may be desirable and many ‘as if’ natural experiments in economic history illuminating, fitting into the ‘credibility revolution’ might involve the neglect of important topics, and excision of other methods and perspectives. Alternatively, methodological diversity and the accommodation of different approaches to sequence, mechanism, and plausibility may provide the basis for a more robust and engaging economic history.