History of Economics Society

The purpose is to promote interest in and inquiry into the history of economics and related parts of intellectual history.

06/13/2026

The History of Economics Society is delighted to announce the winner of this year's Craufurd Goodwin Best Article on the History of Economics Prize.

The Goodwin Award committee – consisting of Katia Caldari (chair), Gary Mongiovi, and Pedro Teixeira – decided to give this year’s award to Daniel Kuehn for his article "Before NBER: Warren Nutter’s Soviet Research at the CIA," published in the Journal of the History of Economic Thought 47(2), 2025.

In this article, Daniel Kuehn focuses on Nutter’s contribution to the study of the Soviet economy and economic growth before becoming director of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in 1954. He explores in detail the period when Nutter was at the CIA as the director of the Economic Capabilities Branch of the CIA’s Office of Research and Reports (ORR) and chairman of the Analysis Subcommittee of the interagency Economic Intelligence Committee.

By using archival material and through a meticulous and detailed analysis, Kuehn reconstructs an important part of Nutter’s intellectual trajectory and sheds new light on his research on the Soviet economy. He shows how the practical challenges of assessing the performance of the Soviet economy led Nutter to confront in innovative ways both the difficulties that structural change poses for the measurement of economic growth, and the limitations of input-output economics as a tool for analyzing structural change. Moreover, through a careful analysis of Nutter’s career in the period 1951-1962 – first at the CIA and then at the NBER – Kuehn brings to light the relationships and interactions between the CIA and the NBER which at that time were mainly concerned with studies and research on the Soviet Union. Kuehn’s paper is very well written, original, and rich; it is a study that addresses an important but largely neglected topic. Based on non-obvious archival material and careful and accurate research, Daniel Kuehn offers us an excellent example of historical research and economic analysis. His paper is a very significant contribution to the history of economic thought.

Previous award winners can be found on the HES website at: https://historyofeconomics.org/awards-and-

06/13/2026

The History of Economics Society is delighted to announce the winner of this year's Joseph Dorfman Best Dissertation Prize.

The Dorfman Award committee – consisting of Juan Carlos Acosta (chair), Marianne Johnson, and Sofia Valeonti – decided to give this year’s award to Mirek Tobíaš Hošman for his work "The World Bank, Economic Expertise, and the Reinvention of Global Economic Governance in the 1960s."

Dr. Hošman's dissertation offers a new understanding of the intellectual evolution of the World Bank during the 1960s, upending the traditional view that places the rise of economists and economic analysis during Robert McNamara's presidency (1968-1981). Rather, through a masterful use of primary and secondary sources, Dr. Hošman shows how this phenomenon actually took place in the previous years, during the presidency of George Woods (1963-1968), and traces the process that transformed the World Bank from a project lender into a leading research and policy institution.

Dr. Hošman's approach takes advantage of newly declassified archival files and oral histories to reconstruct the “underwear politics” or the hidden, behind-the-scenes dynamics of the World Bank. His work illuminates a largely overlooked period during which the Bank was unusually receptive to unconventional proposals, revealing a Bank far more experimental and intellectually generative than orthodox narratives suggest. Dr. Hošman's dissertation is a most welcome addition to the historiography of development economics and a model for studying the evolving role of economic expertise at policy institutions.

Previous award winners can be found on the HES website at: https://historyofeconomics.org/awards-and-honors/dorfman-dissertation-prize/

06/13/2026

The History of Economics Society and the Journal of the History of Economic Thought are delighted to announce the winner of this year's JHET Early Career Scholar Award.

The selection committee – consisting of Jeff Biddle (chair), Steve Medema, and Cléo Chassonery-Zaïgouche – decided to give this year’s award to Adam Walke for his paper, "The Export of Capital to the Colonies and the Falling Rate of Profit in Economic Thought, 1776–1917."

The notion of a declining rate of profit is a hallmark of classical political economy. In his deeply researched paper, Adam Walke shows how several classical thinkers writing in the second quarter of the nineteenth century—a group that included Wakefield, Torrens, and Mill—envisioned the exportation of capital to the colonies as a counter to this decline and developed rationales for further colonization on that basis. Walke neatly juxtaposes the classical theories with those of Marx and with post-1870 thinkers such as Hobson, Hilferding, Bukharin and Lenin, who repurposed them as part of their own assaults on imperialism. In doing so, Walke has shed important new light on the role of the declining rate of profit in the history of economic thinking and its relevance for colonial history.

More information about the JHET Early Career Scholar Award can be found on the HES website at: https://historyofeconomics.org/awards-and-honors/jhet-early-career-scholar-award/

---
Stephen Meardon
Secretary, History of Economics Society
Associate Professor, Bowdoin College

06/12/2026

Article: Friedrich von Hayek and John Dewey on the market and democracy: convergent, complementary, and irreducible contributions to liberal theory, by Véronique Dutraive
https://buff.ly/6COmhvp