ENGECON · Engaged Economists. Politics, profession and economics in the left-wing commitment, 1930s-1960s.

Engaged Economists. Politics, profession and economics in the left-wing commitment, 1930s-1960s.

The research project argues for a new understanding of the relationship between engagement, profession, and economic ideas. It aims to overcome the traditional dichotomy in intellectual history between the history of ideas and the social history of intellectuals, by combining a social history of economists’ engagement with a study of texts of economics. It studies the engagement of economists in the communist, socialist, and labour left in Europe, namely in France, the United Kingdom, and Italy, between the 1900s and the 1950s, by a transnational-comparative and prosopographical approach. It focuses three topics: 1) the factors explaining engagement and its practices; 2) how economists justify their economic approach and motivate their engagement; 3) the implications of the engagement for economic ideas. It considers the analysis of engagement essential in order to understand a period characterized by an unprecedented role played by economists in a labour movement on the ascendancy, by the rise of heterodox economics (broadly defined, as economics, including Keynesianism, advocating for a managed economy), and by the zenith of managed economy. After the economic crisis of 2008-2009 and faced to post-covid economic problems, which challenge the previous economics postulates, the research project contributes to the discussion of a major issue to contemporary civil society and political debates. The research project aims to better understand how the identity and the role of economists in society are shaped and evolve. It then contributes to bring an aspect of the production of economic ideas which is rarely studied to light.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз