Historical Ambiguity: Reshaping the Snows of Yesteryear

Abstract

History of economic thought may have been George Stigler’s first love, but he turned out to be something of a feckless lover as the years rolled by. (It raises the question of why at crucial moments Stigler obviously didn’t seem to give a feck.) At times, his attitude to the field, which greatly benefited from his efforts, parallels the closed-minded perspective of the mechanically gifted but entirely cantankerous Henry Ford. These moments reveal an academic who considers his passion to be something of a guilty pleasure, like someone catching up on his macramé during an academic conference.

History is bunk (Henry Ford)

Those readers with literary pretensions might recognise the allusion to François Villon’s well-known poem. The line of course that forms the work’s refrain: ‘Mais où sont les neiges d’antan!’ ‘Oh, where are the snows of yesteryear!’.