Some years ago, an academic colleague referred to an older economist as ‘a historian,’ which was clearly intended as an insult, given the fetishism among American academic economists for higher-level mathematics. I can’t count the number of time economists have said to me that they simply cannot read the American Economic Review anymore because the math is impenetrable to them But academic economists, by eschewing the study of history, sometimes go astray. Some economists have generated quadratic curves to explain long-term oil and gas prices, arguing that from initially high costs (and prices), economies of scale ... (full story)