HOPE Conference 2013 - Call for papers

Duke's Center for the History of Political Economy (CHOPE) will sponsor a HOPE Conference in April 2013 on the general subject of "MIT and the Transformation of American Economics." The archival collections, in the Economists Papers Project (EPP) of the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, of Paul Samuelson, Robert Solow, Franco Modigliani, Evsey Domar, and Franklin Fisher present an unusually rich source for scholars to examine in order to address the general topic. However those collections certainly do not circumscribe the questions that historians might wish to engage, such as:
How did the MIT Economics Department develop? How much connection was there among the faculty members' research activities? Was there an identifiable MIT/Cambridge economics culture? What networks of faculty, their students, and their students' students came into being as MIT "products"? Were there common features of the work done at MIT by various individuals? What was the pedagogical distinction of the MIT faculty? How were students trained? Did MIT evolve as economic problems evolved, or as economic analysis evolved? What was the view of empirical work, and its role in developing economic analysis? Why has the history of "Chicago Economics" become an industry in the history of economics, while that of MIT has not?
Inquiries and expressions of interest should be sent to Professor E. Roy Weintraub at erw@duke.edu.
Website: http://econ.duke.edu/HOPE/CENTER/home.php