by Darrin McMahon

Earlier this month, Eurochambres, the pro-market lobbying group representing European chambers of commerce to the EU at Brussels, published a follow-up to its 2005 "Time Distances" study comparing the U.S. and European economies. Some of its findings are particularly startling: · The current EU productivity level was achieved by the U.S. in 1985
· Both the current levels for EU employment and R&D investment per capita were reached by the U.S. in 1978
· The current level of EU income was reached by the U.S. in 1985 Think about that first stat again. 1985--that is the year Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the (still so-named) Soviet Union talking of glasnost and perestroika. When Americans were shocked to learn that a "hunk" like Rock Hudson could die of AIDS. When the French government was blowing up Greenpeace boats. When Wham was a force in popular music. When a desk-top computer indeed covered your desk. 1985 was a long time ago. If such economic data is of interest, you should check out, if you missed it, Sheri Berman's review of Barry Eichengreen's The European Economy Since 1945 in The New York Times Book Review this past weekend. Better yet, have a look at the first chapter of Eichengreen's book the Times has put online. Even better still, get the book itself. For anyone who cares about contemporary Europe, it promises to be important. Without invidious or ideological comparison to the United States, Eichengreen explains the provenance and economic realities behind figures like those cited above. He describes why European economies have sputtered of late, arguing that the very forces and policies that sustained the post-war economic miracle to 1973 have since hampered innovation and growth. It is a work of economic history, even-handed and synthetically bold, with considerable explanatory power. How telling that the book was written by an economist. Back before the cultural turn, when Marxism was still a force in the world, capitalism faced real challengers, and people believed that material interests still mattered, historians spent a lot of time thinking about economic development and economic change. But since that time--call it 1985--research and knowledge has steadily waned. It is noteworthy that last year's American Historical Association convention in Atlanta sponsored not a single panel on economic history. The closest thing I could find--an interesting sounding paper on historical economics in Germany--was imbedded in a session entitled "Technology and the Human Subject: German Intellectuals on the Problem of Modernity." Don't get me wrong: I like that sort of thing. But as far as interest in economics is concerned, the cultural bias is revealing. Where, one is tempted to ask, is the beef? Several of my Open University colleagues recently engaged in a discussion about the regrettable neglect of military history among mainstream historians working in the profession today. I wonder what they and others think about the fortunes of economic history and of the understanding (or not) of economics by historians? Is this a problem of supply, of demand? Or is it simply a result of over-specialization, with economists like Eichengreen doing the work historians no longer can or will do? I am embarrassed to say that I don't have a single historian colleague or friend who works on the history of economics to ask. But then I entered college in 1985.