Introduction, or Why We Started This Project

1. 1.

   Economic forecasting is practised by a small minority of economists concentrated in just a few fields, such as financial econometrics and macroeconomics. Economics in general is a backward-looking social science in that it aims to explain the past, albeit usually the very recent past. While the prediction criticism is therefore flawed, perhaps it does reveal a failure to communicate the discipline’s main aim to those outside of academia.

2. 2.

   Although many of these journalistic criticisms are unfair in that they present a very outdated view of what constitutes modern economics. See Coyle (2018) for an impassioned discussion of this point.

3. 3.

   The field of economic history has become mostly unrecognisable to historians since the mainstreaming of quantification and counterfactuals (the so-called Cliometric Revolution). This is even the case among those historians who have avoided the excesses of postmodernism (see, e.g. Evans 2016).

4. 4.

   See Backhouse (2011) for a discussion of Cliffe Leslie and the English Historical School.

5. 5.

   But not without casualties: Miriam Daley, a Queen’s economic history lecturer specialised in migration, was assassinated by loyalist paramilitaries in 1980.

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Authors and Affiliations

1. Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK

   Matthias Blum & Christopher L. Colvin

Editors and Affiliations

1. Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK

   Matthias Blum

2. Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK

   Christopher L. Colvin