Qual a importância da História Económica?

As políticas económicas baseiam-se em narrativas e ideias feitas. Quem são os sujeitos desses discursos e de que forma o conhecimento de História Económica se torna fundamental para entendermos e desconstruirmos essas narrativas? - é este o ponto de partida do professor e economista Simon Ville, no artigo que publica no site do World Economic Forum.

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Unfortunately, among these claimants, the voice of economic history has remained largely silent or selectively galvanised to prosecute a triumphalist or doomsayer interpretation: “the clever country’s many successes in policy and business”; or “the lucky country’s history has been a series of fortuitous events now running out of steam”.

According to the recent review of the national curriculum, our ignorance of economic history begins early. Three times the report chastises the lack of economic history in our schools. The teaching of economic history in universities has become the victim of organisational pressures pushing out small disciplines and intellectual trends on either edge towards econometrics and cultural history.

The seriousness of the recent global financial crisis for many nations jolted economic history from its slumber. In its aftermath, The Economist asked a group of leading economists whether the crisis would affect the teaching of economics. Their overwhelming response was to reinstate economic history in the curriculum.

Entering a new period

Michael Pettis, economic theorist, Wall Street veteran, merchant banker, equities trader and entrepreneur, exclaimed:

“Economic history should be at the heart of economics instruction.”

Just rhetoric? Written in the wake of the crisis, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff’s ironically titled This Time Is Different saw common patterns across hundreds of financial crises of many nations over nearly a millennium. How did so many well-paid bankers and public officials miss what was happening?

The financial crisis barely ruffled the secular boom Australia had been experiencing since the early 1990s. However, we are entering more uncertain times – less the sudden shock of a financial crisis, more the feeling of standing at a crossroads in our economic development.

O artigo completo em Why we need to teach economic history