Description

The History of Economics Playground began in 2007 as a conspiracy. A handful of young PhDs decided in bars in Fairfax, VA, and restaurants in Paris, France, that they were too isolated. Most departments will have none, those that do will have no more than one historian of economics. In our field, unlike most disciplines, there are no venues for collaborative work or the barter of fringe concepts, research methods, and results. Until we could find such physical scholarly places, we would have a virtual community. We started a blog. We called it Playground as a site of encounters, of gaming, of pushing and shoving.

Five years on, and it has fulfilled its promise. Some graduated from being “Kids” and went on to create their own playgrounds. Others joined, recruited or invited themselves. We remain committed to asking, in public and together, how to write compelling histories. We have also probed the roles that histories play in the economics profession and in our polities. We write erratically and in different voices, on our topics and other peoples' too. We invite our readers to come out and play.