Founded in 1892, the prestigious Journal of Political Economy, published by the University of Chicago Press, turned 125 in 2017. The latest edition of the year includes a collection of commemorative essays entitled “The Past, Present and Future of Economics: A Celebration of the 125-Year Anniversary of the JPE and Chicago Economics”.
The introduction was written by John List, chairperson of the department of economics at the University of Chicago, and Harald Uhlig, head editor of the JPE.
We invited our senior colleagues at the department and several at Booth to contribute to this collection of essays. We asked them to contribute around 5 pages of final printed pages plus references, providing their own and possibly unique perspective on the various fields that we cover.
There was not much in terms of instructions. On purpose, this special section is intended as a kaleidoscope, as a colorful assembly of views and perspectives, with the authors each bringing their own perspective and personality to bear. Each was given a topic according to his or her specialty as a starting point, though quite a few chose to deviate from that, and that was welcome. […]
We asked that their contribution be about what the field has accomplished or about where the field might or should be going in the future. It is probably the nature of the beast that all chose a largely backward-looking perspective, providing an overview of how the field has developed over time and how the JPE helped this process along by publishing some of the key ideas and key contributions. But hop on board and start reading!
Lars Peter Hansen, Eugene Fama, Richard Thaler, Luigi Zingales, Robert Lucas, James Heckman, and Steven Levitt are some of the authors who chose to collaborate in the special edition. What a great team.
Access to the collection of essays is free.