Ceteris Never Paribus: The History of Economic Thought Podcast

Guests: Rahul A. Sirohi (Indian Institute of Technology Tirupati) and Sonya Surabhi Gupta (Jamia Milia Islamia) Host and Producer: Maria Bach (Walras Pareto Centre, University of Lausanne) In this episode, I talk to professors Sirohi's and Gupta's book on development discourses from India and Latin America. As mentioned in the episode, here is the poem translated at the beginning of the last chapter: Problems of Underdevelopment Monsieur Dupont calls you unculturedbecause you cannot tell who wasVictor’s Hugo’s favourite grandson.Herr Müller has started to screambecause you do not know (exactly)the day that Bismarck died.Your friend Mr. Smithan Englishman or Yankee, I cannot tell,becomes incensed when you write Shell.(It seems you leave out an “l”and, what’s more, you pronounce it chel.)Okay, and what of it?When it’s your turn,make them say cacarajícaraand ask them where is the Aconcaguaand who was Sucréand just where on this planetdid Martí die.And please:tell them to always speak to you in Spanish. Nicolás Guillén Trans. by Rahul Sirohi and Sonya Surabhi Gupta

Guest: Raphaël Fèvre (Université de Côte d'Azur) Host and Producer: Maria Bach (Walras Pareto Centre, University of Lausanne) In this episode, Maria talks to Raphaël Fèvre who published a book with Oxford University Press, pictured above, based on his PhD research. For advice on writing a book, see the following books: From Dissertation to Book Revise: The Scholar-Writer’s Essential Guide to Tweaking, Editing, and Perfecting Your Manuscript

Guest: Eric Helleiner (University of Waterloo) Host and Producer: Maria Bach (University of Lausanne) In this episode, Maria interviews Eric Helleiner to discuss his current research on writing a deeper global history of the field of International Political Economy. We mainly discuss his latest two books pictured above, The Contested World Economy and The Neomercantilists.

Guest: Srishti Yadav (Azim Premji University, Bengaluru) Host and Producer: Maria Bach (Walras Pareto Centre, University of Lausanne) In this episode Maria talks to Srishti about her heterodox economics studies, her work on Paradigms in Economics and her book project on the agrarian question in India. Check out the following links to Srishti's research: Yadav, S. (2022) ‘Caste, diversification, and the contemporary agrarian question in India: A field perspective’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 22(4), pp. 651–672. A video presentation of the above article for the Foundation of Agrarian Studies seminar series. Yadav, S. (2022) ‘Reviewing Petty Commodity Production: Toward a Unified Marxist Conception’, Review of Radical Political Economics, 54(4), pp. 411–419. To check out the Indian Society of History of Economic Thought established in 2023, click here.

Guest: Cecilia Lanata-Briones (Warwick University) Host and Producer: Maria Bach (Walras Pareto Centre, University of Lausanne) Bunge, A. E. (1918): «Costo de la vida en la Argentina, de 1910 a 1917». Revista de Economía Argentina 1 (1), pp. 39-63 In this episode, Maria talks to her co-author and team member of a new project on the history of national accounting in what we call the Global South today. Cecilia talks about her thesis on the history of the cost-of-living index in Argentina, a recent co-edited book and our new project. To check out some of Cecilia's work, see two of her articles linked below: Lanata-Briones, C.T. (2021) ‘Constructing Cost of Living Indexes Ideas and Individuals, Argentina, 1918–35’, History of Political Economy, 53(1), pp. 57–87. Lanata-Briones CT. (2023) 'RECONSTRUCTING OFFICIAL STATISTICS: A NEW ESTIMATE OF THE ARGENTINE COST OF LIVING INDEX', 1912-1943. Revista de Historia Económica / Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History. 41(1):39-82.

Guest: Nestor Lovera (Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne) Host and Producer: Maria Bach (Centre Walras-Pareto, University of Lausanne) In this episode, Maria interviews Nestor Lovera from the Université of Reims Champagne-Ardenne about his thesis and latest projects. For a summary of Nestor's thesis, click here. Check out Nestor's new podcast (in French) on the history of economic thought: https://l-heure-d-unepauseconomique.fr/

Guests: Cléo Chassonnery-Zaïgouche (Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Bologna), Justine Loulergue (PhD Student, Centre d'Économie de la Sorbonne, Paris 1 & Centre Walras Pareto, Unil), María Gutiérrez Ruan (PhD Student, Centre Walras Pareto, Unil), Tatiana Fauconnet (PhD Student, Centre Walras Pareto, Unil) and Biancamaria Fontana (Emeritus Professor, Centre Walras Pareto, Unil) Host and Producer: Maria Bach (Centre Walras-Pareto, University of Lausanne) We’re back with a second episode with existing and former members of the Walras Pareto Centre. If you didn’t listen to part I, I recommend listening to part I first. This time we will hear about what they like and dislike about their work. And about any regrets they may have about their choices or trajectories. If you want to join an online writing group on Thursdays at 10.15-12.15 CEST, contact Maria Bach via Twitter or email. Featured music (apart from the usual intro and outro music): Loop of Life - V01 by RAME (RAMEofficial.com) via FreeSound (freesound.org/people/RokZRooM) under Creative Commons' BY-NC-ND license.

Guests: Maxine Berg (Professor, Warwick University) and Pat Hudson (Professor, Cardiff University) Host and Producer: Maria Bach (Centre Walras-Pareto, University of Lausanne) In this episode, I interview Maxine Berg and Pat Hudson about their recent book on the role of slavery in capitalist development and the British industrial revolution. To check out Eric Williams book on slavery and capitalism, click here.

Guests: Cléo Chassonnery-Zaïgouche (Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Bologna), Justine Loulergue (PhD Student, Centre d'Économie de la Sorbonne, Paris 1 & Centre Walras Pareto, Unil), Maria Gutiérrez Ruan (PhD Student, Centre Walras Pareto, Unil), Tatiana Fauconnet (PhD Student, Centre Walras Pareto, Unil) and Biancamaria Fontana (Emeritus Professor, Centre Walras Pareto, Unil) Host and Producer: Maria Bach (Centre Walras-Pareto, University of Lausanne) In this episode, I share some conversations I had with some existing and old members of the Walras Pareto Centre (CWP) in Lausanne. These are raw conversations from researchers in the history of economics and political science that may help you feel less alone and might just help you figure some things out. Who knows? Featured music (apart from the usual intro and outro music): Loop of Life - V01 by RAME (RAMEofficial.com) via FreeSound (freesound.org/people/RokZRooM) under Creative Commons' BY-NC-ND license.

Guests: Johan Östling, LUCK's director, the two deputy directors Anna Nilsson Hammar and David Larsson Heidenblad, as well as a PhD student at the centre, Evelina Kallträsk. Host and Producer: Maria Bach (Centre Walras-Pareto, University of Lausanne) From left to right: Anna Nilsson Hammar, Johan Östling, Evelina Kallträsk and David Larsson Heidenblad. In this episode, I spoke to several members of the History of Knowledge Centre at the University of Lund, or LUCK for short. We discuss what is the history of knowledge and how its approaches might be useful for historians of economics. To check out their publications, as well as other opportunities that the centre has to offer, go here. Featured music (apart from the usual intro and outro music): Sounds by Alyonka and Sonically Sound, Retro Funk.

Guest: Cléo Chassonnery-Zaïgouche (Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Bologna) Host and Producer: Maria Bach (Centre Walras-Pareto, University of Lausanne) In this episode, I invited Cléo Chassonnery-Zaïgouche to talk about her new book project on the history of discrimination in economics, partly based on her PhD thesis. If you're interested in her work, check out her website here. Featured music (apart from the usual intro and outro music): Sound by Alyonka.

Guest: François Allisson (Centre Walras-Pareto, University of Lausanne) Host and Producer: Maria Bach (Centre Walras-Pareto, University of Lausanne) In this episode, I invited François Allisson to talk to us about a game he made with some of his students called Sortons du capitalisme ! or Exit Capitalism! in English. Two cards from the game. Translation of titles: Trust Fund Baby (left) and The Theory of the Dress (right). For further explanation in English, listen to the episode. Thanks to Justine Loulergue, Thomas Bouchet, Etienne Furrer and Sina Badiei for agreeing to be recorded when we played the game at the Walras-Pareto Centre at the University of Lausanne. The other games referred to in the podcast are KAPITAL and Class Struggle. To check out the history of Monopoly referred to at the end, listen here. Featured music (apart from the usual intro and outro music): Sounds by Sonically Sound, Retro Funk and Melokocool, Game Over.

Guests: Erik Bengtsson (Lund University), Pat Hudson (Cardiff University) and Keith Tribe (Tartu University) Host and Producer: Maria Bach (Centre Walras-Pareto, University of Lausanne) Erik Bengtsson, an economic historian of Sweden, refers to this cartoon which depicts the parliament in session when an invisible hand writes "General Strike" on the board published in a national newspaper, Söndags Nisse in 1906. Taken from Fredrik Ström's Arbetets söner: text och bilder ur den svenska arbetarrörelsens saga. Third Edition. Steinsviks bokförlag AB, 1959. As we heard in part one of our series on inequality, researchers looking at inequality urge people to look more on the micro level because the trends and causes are not universal across time and space. So in this second part, we look at why and how inequality goes up and down depending on where you look. All the examples you will hear, in some way, critique and build upon Thomas Piketty’s comparative approach. We will hear from Erik Bengtsson, who studies the trends of inequality in Sweden. To check out Erik's work, click here. We will also hear from Keith Tribe and his co-editor Pat Hudson talk about their collected work called The Contradictions of Capital in the 21st century in which they build upon the renewed interest in the long run global development of wealth inequality stimulated by the publication of Piketty’s book Capital in the 21st Century. To watch the TED talk video on inequality featured at the beginning, go here. Featured music (apart from the usual intro and outro music): Sounds by Dave JF, Atmosphere 12, and Jordan Powell, Erokia. Finally, thanks to David Philippy for helping with production.

Guests: Poornima Paidipaty (King's College, London), Pedro Ramos Pinto (University of Cambridge), Dan Hirschman (Cornell University), Christian O. Christiansen (Åarhus University) and Keith Tribe (Tartu University) Host and Producer: Maria Bach (Centre Walras-Pareto, University of Lausanne) In this two part series on inequality, we will be talking about moments during the history of researching inequality. In this first part, we explore different ways people have thought about inequality and how it is measured, and the possible impacts that this thinking and measurement has on our economies and policies. In part two, to be released soon, we look at why and how inequality goes up and down depending on where we look. Poornima Paidipaty and Pedro Ramos Pinto talk primarily about their special issue on The Measure of Inequality: Social Knowledge in Historical Perspective published in 2020 in the Historical of Political Economy Journal. To check out Dan Hirschman's approach to analysing how things are counted called knowledge infrastructures, see this article. He references the book A Vast Machine by Paul Edwards. To find out more about Christian O. Christiansen's project on historicising global inequality, check out their website. To check out his latest book, Talking About Inequality, click here. Keith Tribe refers to Phelps Brown at the end, see his book here. To watch the BBC Select video on the Occupy Movement featured at the beginning, go here. And the chant "We are the 99%" was taken from this video. Featured music (apart from the usual intro and outro music): Sounds by Dave JF, Atmosphere 12, Alyonka, Kjartan Abel, Japan Sky and BaDoink, Acoustic E Minor Jam. Finally, thanks to David Philippy for helping with production.

Guests: James Heckman, Esther-Mirjam Sent, Philip Hans Franses and Erwin DekkerHosted by Reinhard Schumacher and Arjo Klamer In this episode we present a book panel on the book Jan Tinbergen (1903-1994) and the Rise of Economic Expertise (CUP, 2021) by our regular host Erwin Dekker. Reinhard Schumacher provides a brief introduction to the panel which is chaired by Arjo Klamer, Professor of Cultural Economics at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. The panel opens with reflections on the book and the legacy of Jan Tinbergen, the first Nobel Prize winner in Economics and famous econometrician, by another Nobel Laureate James Heckman, Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. The other panelists offer their reflections on the econometric and economic contributions of Tinbergen, and in particular his role as broker between academia and policy circles, a main argument of the book is that Tinbergen secured a permanent place for economic experts and models in policy circles. They also explore Tinbergen's socialist convictions, his internationalism and dedication to peace, as well as his and their personal motivations to be an economist.

Guests: Peter Bent, François Allisson, Herman Daly and Sara Stevano (see below for more information).Host and Producer: Maria Bach, Centre Walras Pareto, Unil, Lasuanne (former Assistant Professor of Economics at the American University of Paris)Guest hosts: Wilhelm Aminoff, Wyatt DeLong, Farrah Aridou, Jonathan Noulowe II and Paul Harding, students of a history of economics course at the American University of Paris. Inspired by Radiolab's episode on the cataclysm sentence, this episode explores whether we could find a cataclysm sentence for economics. Radiolab had found out about the famous and award winning physicist, Richard Feynman, who in the 60s wanted to revamp the physics undergraduate degree to get more researchers into physics. He started his course at Caltech with what he called the cataclysm sentence, which is: “If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence was passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words?” We changed it a bit to apply only to economics: "The one piece of economic knowledge that you would pass on to a future society if ours were to perish in a cataclysm." Along with students at the American University of Paris, we interviewed four people, an economic historian, an ecological economist, a feminist political economist and an historian of economics. Here is the list of their cataclysm sentences: Peter Bent, Department of Economics, Trinity College, Connecticut, USA Julie Nelson's (UMass Boston) definition of economics: "The study of the ways societies organize themselves to provide for the survival and flourishing of life." Herman Daly, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, USA "Although not reducible to biophysics, the human economy is nevertheless ecologically constrained, especially in its primary macroeconomic goal of aggregate growth, by the fact that it is a physical subsystem of a finite ecosphere that lives from a non growing entropic flow of solar energy captured by scarce and depleting terrestrial materials.” Sara Stevano, Department of Economics, The School of Oriental and African Studies, London "Power relations are intrinsic to economic phenomena at multiple and interconnected scales." François Allisson, Centre Walras Pareto, Unil, Lausanne "Economics was a temporary scienceNecessary in times of perceived scarcityTo understand the waysIn which human needsTranslatedIn various ways of organising human activities" (pictured above) While everyone had slightly different takes on the task and took us down different avenues of knowledge, there were several common themes. So fasten your seat belts, as we take you on a journey of discovery and at times a rather philosophical, utopic and radical discussion about what really matters. Featured music (apart from the usual intro and outro music): Sounds by Jordan Powell, Erokia: https://freesound.org/people/Erokia/

Guests: Alain Marciano and Peter J. BoettkeHosted and produced by Erwin Dekker In this episode, Erwin talks with Alain Marciano and Pete Boettke about The Soul of Classical Political Economy a book they co-edited with archival material from the James Buchanan archives located at George Mason University. James Buchanan, Nobel Laureate in 1986 was an American economist who started as public finance scholar, who established the field of public choice and pioneered the constitutional political economy approach. They discuss the formation of the archives since Buchanan's death in 2013, his role in the development of the Virginia School of Political Economy, his academic entrepreneurship and attempts to develop intellectual centres in sometimes hostile academic environments as well the evolution of his research program. Pete Boettke details the way in which Buchanan attempted to create a vibrant intellectual environment at the various universities in which he worked. Alain Marciano, who is working on an intellectual biography of Buchanan, explains the way in which the archives inform his project and how life and work became one for Buchanan.

Guest: Kapil RajHost and Producer: Maria Bach Join Maria Bach for an interview with Kapil Raj about his approach in the history of science. Dr. Raj is Professor of the History of Science at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (The School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences) in Paris. In particular, they discuss Raj's book Relocating Modern Science. Links to works and institutions mentioned: 1. The Go Between by L.P. Hartley 2. The Lund Centre for History of Knowledge (LUCK)

Guests: Stefan Kolev and Mark McAdamHosted and produced by Reinhard Schumacher and Erwin Dekker In this episode, Reinhard and Erwin talk with Stefan Kolev and Mark McAdam about the recent translation of eight classic articles in the tradition of German Socio-Economics including work by Georg Simmel, Joseph Schumpeter, Gustav Schmoller and Ferdinand Tönnies. These articles were picked from the rich archive of Schmollers Jahrbuch (currently Journal of Contextual Economics). They discuss the best way to understand the German tradition of Socio-Economics, the helpfulness of the Historical School label, how institutional change is best studied, and how relevant this tradition of thought is to under current socio-economic transformations around the world. The editors of these translations also discuss the process of translation both language wise and between different intellectual traditions.The issue of the Journal of Contextual Economics with all translation and original articles is open-access for a limited amount of time.

Guests: Jaci Eisenberg, Gerardo Serra and Sharmin KhodaijiHosted and produced by Maria Bach In this episode, Maria interviews three scholars who study underrepresented or what she calls marginalised voices in the history of policy and economics. They discuss why they came to study such lesser known figures and how the research can give us new perspectives. They also share the difficulties and constraints that they face. Jaci Eisenberg studied American women who contributed to the League of Nations. Gerardo Serra studies the history of economics and statistics in 20th century Ghana. Sharmin Khodaiji researches the institutionalisation of political economy in India. Listen to find out more about their research!