Harro Maas

European Free Trade Association

After the failure of the free trade area negotiations in the OEEC at the end of 1958, the industrial federations of the countries that are now members of EFTA, suggested that a free trade zone be established between those countries that remained outside the European Communities. Government officials of these seven countries met at Saltsjobaden near Stockholm in June 1959 to draw up a draft plan for a European Free Trade Association. At a ministerial meeting the following month it was recommended to the respective Governments that such an Association be set up (Communique of 21 July). Negotiations for a Convention were completed by November 1959 (Resolution of 20 November), and the Convention establishing the European Free Trade Association was signed at Stockholm on 4 January 1960. It came into force on 3 May 1960.

“Fraught with Controversy”: Organizing Expertise against Contingent Valuation

This paper examines consulting and expert work performed by (experimental) economists for the Exxon Valdez litigation case. One of the issues at stake was the use of a specific method, contingent valuation, to estimate the so-called passive use value part of the damage resulting from the Exxon Valdez oil spill of March 24, 1989. Our interest is less in the possibilities of using contingent valuation to estimate passive use values as such, and more in the dynamics of consulting and expert work itself, which in litigation cases mostly remains hidden behind the veil of contracts. Because Exxon went explicitly public in the Exxon Valdez case, this veil can be partially lifted. In contrast with Public Trustees, who submitted a monetary damage estimate to the Court, Exxon decided to follow a radically different strategy: it organized an all-out assault on the method by which such a monetary estimate was most likely to be produced. That strategy cut across social and epistemic commitments of different segments of the economics discipline, raising questions about the different meanings of expertise, and the role of economists in the legal, business, and public domain. This paper aims to address these questions.

Knowledge and Skills

Good morning, everyone. Welcome back. Congratulations to us for assembling a complete group by more or less 8:30 in the morning after a late, but extremely, enjoyable dinner. One thought that crosses my mind is that I am going to try to encourage you where I can in the sessions today, as I was doing yesterday, but perhaps doing more so, to illustrate answers that you are giving me, points that you are making with reference to specific examples of your work, other people’s work, when these things were, and what happened. I want to encourage you to think in that reminiscence mode and provide examples that you are drawing on.

Making Things Technical: Paul Samuelson at MIT

This article examines how Samuelson defined his own role as an economist as a technical expert, who walked what he called the “middle of the road” to—seemingly—stay out of the realm of politics. As point of entry I discuss the highly tempting offers made by Theodore M. Schultz in the 1940s to come over to Chicago, which Schultz persistently repeated over three years and despite strong Chicago faculty resistance. A contrast between Schultz’s own experiences as an economic expert at Iowa State, Samuelson’s work as an external consultant for the National Resources Planning Board during the Second World War, and the firm support of the MIT administration for Samuelson’s research serves to pinpoint the meaning of being technical for Samuelson, and the relation of the technical economic expert to the realm of politics.

A Road Not Taken: Economists, Historians of Science, and the Making of the Bowman Report

This essay investigates a hitherto-unexamined collaboration between two of the founders of modern history of science, Henry Guerlac and I. Bernard Cohen, and two economists, Paul Samuelson and Rupert Maclaurin. The arena in which these two disciplines came together was the Bowman Committee, one of the committees that prepared material for Vannevar Bush’s Science—The Endless Frontier. The essay shows how their collaboration helped to shape the committee’s recommendations, in which different models of science confronted each other. It then shows how, despite this success, the basis for long-term collaboration of economists and historians of science disappeared, because the resulting linear model of science and technology separated the study of scientific and economic progress into noncommunicating boxes.

Introduction to the Symposium on the Contributions of Business to Economics

Historians of economics have largely overlooked the role of businesses in the formation of economic ideas. Indeed, this is true even of historians who are most attuned to the crucial role non-economists have played in shaping the ideas and practices of economics. For example, in his (1999) essay: “How should we write the history of twentieth-century economics?” Roy Weintraub omits any mention of the role of businesspersons. In keeping with his own work, Weintraub urges historians to examine not only the theoretical ideas, but also how these ideas have been translated across the economics profession into communities comprising administrators and policymakers. He emphasizes: “Discussing economic thought in the twentieth century from this perspective would encourage writing histories of eleemosynary foundations, government agencies, political organizations, private political advocacy groups, and a whole range of journalistic practices and news-reporting strategies” (148). We suggest that businesses should be added to Weintraub’s list. This is not to suggest that historians have not examined the business-economics nexus because they certainly have, primarily in two ways.

Trust and Non-Self-Governing Territories

Tanganyika. Administering Authority: United Kingdom. Trusteeship Agreement: T/AGR/2. Independent on 9 December 1962. Cf. GA Res. 1642 (XVI) of 11 November 1961.

The European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom)

Signed at Rome on 25 March 1957. Came into force on 1 January 1958. Without annexes, protocols, conventions, final act and declarations. For the authentic text and an English translation see also U.N.T.S. Vols. 294, 295, 296, 297, 298.

The Method of the Witness Seminar

On May 28–29, 2010, twelve experimental economists gathered at the Dutch Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences in Amsterdam for a witness seminar on the history of the experiment in economics. Though the witness seminar has been used as an oral method of research in contemporary history and in the history of medicine and technology, this was its first extensive use in the history of economics. My contribution examines the witness seminar as a method of oral history, its merits and pitfalls, using this witness seminar on experimental economics as a nonrepresentative sample.

Handbook on the history of economic analysis, edited by Gilbert Faccarello and Heinz D. Kurz: 3 Vols., Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 2016: Vol. 1, 816 pp., ISBN 978-1785361319; Vol. 2, 512 pp., £170 (hardback), ISBN 978-1849801119; Vol. 3, 672 pp., £220, (hardback), ISBN 978 1 84980 112 6

Ornithology and the extinction of species are never far away when it comes to the history of economics. In his 2006 presidential address to the European Society for the History of Economic Thought,...