‘English economics’, if it ever existed, is a wholly historical entity, albeit one for which some distinction might be claimed in the round and for which, at various points, the existence or otherwise of ‘English schools’ has been the subject of scholarly enquiry.
Thus, for example, we have the negative verdict in the original Palgrave that the ‘English writers on political economy before Adam Smith do not at any time present the marks of a “school” properly so-called’ (Bonar, 1894, 730); and, conversely, Schumpeter’s (1954, 830) very positive assessment that there was a definite ‘age of Marshall’ which transformed economics, not just in England but internationally.
Certainly, there is no such current entity as English economics, though there has been, and may still be in today’s internationalised world of science, a ‘British’ economics.‘English economists’ is a somewhat less problematic concept, at least historically, but even here we confront a general problem of geography and identity: from the Treaty of Union, 1707, Scotland has been part of the United Kingdom which also comprises England and Wales, with Ireland additionally part of that union from 1801 until 1922 when what is now the Republic of Ireland seceded, leaving only the province of Northern Ireland. Similarly, ‘England’ is problematic as, for centuries, England and Wales has operated as a single economic and political unit, although in the past 40 years or so Wales, and even more so Scotland, have achieved a measure of devolution. Amidst this complexity, we adopt an operational definition that ‘English economics’ is that produced by ‘English economists’, with these defined as those working (at least for a major part of their career) in England which, in turn, encompasses Wales and Ireland (Northern Ireland from 1923). Inevitably, given that English is a world language, economists are geographically mobile and their ideas even more so, and economics is a public discourse, the artificiality of the adjective ‘English’ means our subject inevitably becomes British economics as we approach the modern era, though the population dominance of England in the UK is considerably more pronounced now than in the past, when pre-famine Ireland was a significant component of the union.
Our account of the development and significance of English economics so defined is framed in terms of a market for ‘economic knowledge’, a concept broader than purely economic theory or economic doctrine so as to acknowledge, first, that in Britain, as typically elsewhere, ‘professional economists do not have a monopoly of economic knowledge’; and, second, and here Britain is much more distinctive, that the market has always been highly contestable. Whilst it is axiomatic that the market mechanism lies at the heart of economics, it is also more than usually appropriate as a metaphor for British economics.
This market has had highly context- and time-specific supply and demand characteristics (Middleton, 1998, ch. 3). There is a long provenance to British political economy discourse being dominated by appeals to, or resistance against, the market (Middleton, 1996), and, much more recently, we have a ‘new’ history of economic thought paradigm ‘with its concern for the relationship between the “high” political thought of theorists, the “medium” thought of officials, businessmen and commentators, and the “low” thought of daily life and experience (a formulation not without its problems)’ (Daunton, 2011, 222). Current historiography on modern British history includes many contributions on how economic ideas have united (and often divided) civil society and commerce (for example, Rothschild, 2001 on Adam Smith and the Enlightenment; and Trentmann, 2008 on free trade). With widespread acceptance now that cultural norms matter for both the production and reception of economic ideas, and that modern internationalised economics is very much the product of Anglo-American cultural norms (Coats, 1997), an assessment of the development of English economics which foregrounds cultural and other non-economic concerns is very timely.
On the supply side of the market, the production of economic knowledge, historically, and still formally the case today, there are no barriers to entry to being an economist.
For much of our period, no formal academic qualifications were required for being an academic economist, itself an inchoate profession, with canonical figures as late as J.M. Keynes (1883—1946) having no first degree in the subject (Keynes, as Marshall (1842—1924), was a Cambridge mathematics graduate), whilst doctoral training was relatively unusual until the 1960s. A measure of the demand side is provided by Peden’s (1996, 171—2) five categories of economic knowledge sought in this market: first, information; second, practical experience; third, economic theory; fourth, informed opinion; and fifth what he calls, ‘realities of political economy’. All are important, but only the third, economic theory, is routinely part of the academic history of economic thought, whilst the fifth category has an especial relevance, for it is conceived as ‘A sense of the “art of the possible” in economic affairs... for ministers and their advisers’ and, as we shall argue, the history of economics in Britain is intimately related to its public policy role. We thus follow Alex Cairncross (1911—98), a towering figure in postwar British economics, who operated ‘as an intermediary in the market for economic advice... between theory and practice, between the theorists who seek to trap the inner secrets of the economy in their models and the practitioners who live in a world of action where time is precious, understanding is limited, nothing is certain, and noneconomic considerations are always important and often decisive’ (Cairncross, 1985, 1).