Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-jr42d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T02:29:46.445Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Memoirs of an Economist Watcher

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2009

A. W. Bob Coats
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Oddly enough, my first clear recollection of an encounter with an economic proposition dates from the age of six or seven, when my father (who died suddenly from the pneumonia when I was eight) casually remarked that the Colman Mustard Company derived most of its profits from the residue people left on their plates. Unfortunately at the time I did not appreciate the analytical subtlety of this observation. Nor, I suspect, did my father, who probably only wanted to particularize the familiar maxim: waste not, want not. Nevertheless, the point evidently stayed in my mind, though I cannot claim it as the origin of my subsequent fascination with economics. The evolution of my attitudes to economics will tie considered later. First, however, let me briefly sketch some relevant features of my personal and socio-economic background, which may shed some light on my subsequent intellectual activities.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the History of Economic Thought , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , Fall 1996 , pp. 250 - 270
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Barber, William J. 1988. Breaking the Academic Mould. Economists and American Higher Education in the Nineteenth Century, Wesleyan University Press, Middletown.Google Scholar
Benham, Frederick. 1941. Economics. Pitman, London.Google Scholar
Blaug, Mark. 1962. Economic Theory in Retrospect; 4th ed., Irwin, Homewood, 1985.Google Scholar
Boulding, Kenneth. 1950. The Reconstruction of Economics, Wiley, New York.Google Scholar
Clapham, John H. 1949. A Concise Economic History of Britain. From the Earliest Times to 1750, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Coats, A. W. 1953. Methodological Controversy as an Approach to the History of American Economics, 1885–1930, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.Google Scholar
Coats, A. W. 1960. “Economic Thought and Poor Law Policy in the Eighteenth Century,” Economic History Review, 13, August, 39–51.Google Scholar
Coats, A. W. 1964a. The Role of Value Judgments in Economics, Thomas Jefferson Center for Political Economy, Charlottesville, Virginia.Google Scholar
Coats, A. W. 1964b. “Value Judgments in Economics,” Yorkshire Bulletin of Economic and Social Research, 16, November, 53–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coats, A. W. 1968. “Political Economy and the Tariff Reform Debate of 1903.” Journal of Law and Economics, 11, April, 181–229.Google Scholar
Coats, A. W. 1969a. “Is there a Structure of Scientific Revolutions in Economics?,” Kyklos, 22, no.2, 289–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coats, A. W. 1969b. “Research Priorities in the History of Economics,” History of Political Economy, 1, April, 9–18.Google Scholar
Coats, A. W. 1980. “The Historical Context of the New Economic History,” Journal of European Economic History, 9, Spring, 185–207.Google Scholar
Coats, A. W., ed. 1981. Economists in Government. An International Comparative Study, Duke University Press, Durham.Google Scholar
Coats, A. W. 1983. “The First Decade of Hope (1968–1979),” History of Political Economy, 15, Fall, 303–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coats, A. W., ed. 1986. Economists in International Agencies. An Exploratory Study, Praeger International, New York.Google Scholar
Coats, A. W. 1992. “First kick up a dust…” in Coats, A. W., ed., On the History of Economic Thought. British and American Economic Essays, 1, Routledge, London.Google Scholar
Coats, A. W. 1994. “Economics as a Policy Science,” in Perrotta, C. and Gioia, V., Where is Economics Going? Historical Viewpoints, Università Degli Studi di Lecce, Congedo editori.Google Scholar
Coats, A. W., ed. 1997. The Post-1945 Internationalization of Economics, Duke University Press, Durham.Google Scholar
Durbin, Elizabeth. 1985. New Jerusalems. The Labour Party and the Economics of Democratic Socialism, Routledge, London.Google Scholar
Elkins, Stanley. 1959. Slavery: A Problem in American Intellectual and Institutional Life, Chicago University Press, Chicago.Google Scholar
Fogel, Robert and Engerman, Stanley. 1974. Time on the Cross, Little Brown, Boston.Google Scholar
Gayer, A. D., Rostow, W. W., and Schwartz, A. J.. 1953. The Growth and Fluctuation of the British Economy, 1790–1850, 2 vols. Clarendon Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Hayek, Friedrich A. von. 1944. The Road to Serfdom, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Google Scholar
Hutchison, Terence W. 1952. “Historians of Economic Thought,” in Burns, Arthur F., ed., Wesley Clair Mitchell. Economic Scientist, National Bureau of Economic Research, New York, 292–300.Google Scholar
Hutchison, Terence W. 1992. Changing Aims in Economics, Blackwell, Oxford.Google Scholar
Johnson, Hewlett. 1939. The Socialist Sixth of the World, Gollancz, London.Google Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas S. 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2d ed., University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Wesley C. 1967. Types of Economic Theory. From Mercantilism to Institutionalism, edited by Joseph, Dorfman, 1, Augustus M. Kelley, New York.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Wesley C. 1969. Types of Economic Theory. From Mercantilism to Institutionalism, edited by Joseph, Dorfman, 2, Augustus M. Kelley, N.Y.Google Scholar
Polanyi, Michael. 1958. Personal Knowledge. Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Google Scholar
Rogin, Leo. 1956. The Meaning and Validity of Economic Theory, Harper, New York.Google Scholar
Rostow, Walt W. 1948. The British Economy in the Nineteenth Century, Clarendon Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Rutherford, Malcolm. 1994. Institutions in Economics. The Old and the New Institutionalism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Schumpeter, J. A. 1954. History of Economic Analysis, Oxford University Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Smith, Adam. 1776. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Cadell, London.Google Scholar
Stigler, George J. 1946. The Theory of Competitive Price, Macmillan, New York.Google Scholar
Wilson, John Dover. 1937. What Happens in Hamlet? Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar