1993 is an auspicious year for the History of Economics Society. Almost exactly twenty years and one month ago the first gathering of historians of economic thought took place in Chicago. It was not exactly the first meeting of the Society since it was officially formed only in 1974 and the first official meeting took place that year in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. However, the 1973 meeting demonstrated that there was sufficient interest in the subject to form a society. Hence, this is both the twentieth annual meeting of the History of Economics Society and the twentieth anniversary of its inception.

In the course of coediting the Handbook of Experimental Economics (forthcoming) it became clear to me that contemporary experimental economists tend to carry around with them different and very partial accounts of the history of this still emerging field. This project began as an attempt to merge these “folk histories” of the origins of what I am confident will eventually be seen as an important chapter in the history and sociology of economics.

Although in the past some of the best-known trade specialists have lavished praise on Vilfredo Pareto's theory of international trade, this aspect of his writings has been neglected for many years. Pareto's name figures in trade-theoretic articles only combined with the word “optimum,” as if the concept of a “Pareto optimum” constituted the beall and end-all of Pareto's contribution. This parallels Pareto's fame as a general economic theorist, of which it has recently been said that “it is disappointing that this reputation should be constructed on the basis of such a small part of his work” (Kirman 1986, p. 808).

During the sixteenth century, successive waves of gold and silver reached Spain from America and then rolled across Europe to the North and East. Contemporaries made two observations. First, the inflow of bullion was associated with inflation. Second, a given amount of money in a country with relatively low prices tended to exchange for a larger amount of money in a country with relatively high prices. The scholastic doctors in Salamanca who interpreted these observations are traditionally credited with two modern insights, namely the quantity theory of money, and the principle of purchasing-power parity.

Thorstein Veblen's theory of institutions has often been interpreted as explaining that institutions (social habits) are formed in previous time periods under the influence of earlier states of technology. Accordingly, in the modern era institutions are “static, backward looking, and resistant to change, alterations…occurring only under pressure from the dynamic of technological progress” (Rutherford 1984, p. 331). As a recent case in point, R. W. Ault and R. B. Ekelund (1988, p. 438; see also p. 435) stated that Veblen's “view of habits was an inert and exogenous view.” Malcolm Rutherford (1984) has noted that Veblen described several processes of internal development of institutions within a system governed by a given logic, e.g., the business enterprise system under the logic of pecuniary values.

Karl Marx's work “Reflections” is to be found in Notebook 7, one of the twenty-four notebooks in which he made entries between September 1850 and August 1853. Although never published in his lifetime and undiscovered until long after his death, the essay is not insignificant. It illuminates one of the more obscure aspects of the development of Marx's thought: his change of view on paper money.

The “technical” interpretation of Karl Marx's theory of value, which asserted that the concept of use-value played no role in his economics, has in recent years been shown to be ill-founded. In particular, R. Rosdolsky (1977) and S. Groll (1980) have established the importance that Marx attached to the concept of use-value in his theory of value, while I have shown that the use-value is an essential component of his analysis of the commodity, and that when properly applied, that analysis invalidates the labor theory of value (Keen 1993). This modern re-evaluation of Marx raises the question of how the traditional view developed in the first place. R. Hilferding aside, the answer does not paint a complimentary picture of the scholarship of either friend or foe of Marx in the debate over his theory of value.

The word VALUE, it is to be observed, has two different meanings, and sometimes expresses the utility of some particular object, and sometimes the power of purchasing other goods which the possession of that object conveys. The one may be called ‘value in use;’ the other, ‘value in exchange.’ The things which have the greatest value in use have frequently little or no value in exchange; and, on the contrary, those which have the greatest value in exchange have frequently little or no value in use. Nothing is more useful than water: but it will purchase scarce any thing; scarce any thing can be had in exchange for it. A diamond, on the contrary, has scarce any value in use; but a very great quantity of other goods may frequently be had in exchange for it (Smith 1776, I, iv, p. 42).