Thread by @MonnetEric

'Why central bankers should read economic history'. >a short essay on the potential contributions of economic history to monetary policy-making. 1/5
booksandideas.net/Why-Central-Ba…

The virtue of history is not only to improve economic models and quantitative studies, but to provide a perspective distinct from standard economic reasoning. I distinguish the "indirect" contribution of econ. history (i.e. enrich theory, enlarge empirical datasets) from ...2/5

the direct contribution of history to economic policy-making: contextualize and emphasize how the current situation is a unique product of historical trends and contingent forces. Econ. history is much more than applied econ. to the past !3/5

Although this distinction is quite obvious and well-known, I believe it is useful to organize econ. history research in central banks and think about motivations to improve historical knowledge on these institutions. I give several examples (macropru, public debt) 4/5

This text was written for this great conference at the Bank of England in December. The @BoE_Research has made tremendous effort to open its archives to researchers and provide historical ressources to historians 5/5
bankofengland.co.uk/events/2020/no…

discussing the work of @kevinhorourke @MSchularick @adam_tooze @B_Eichengreen @nunopgpalma and many other not on twitter (hope they will not disagree :-).
Comments welcome of course

There's also a brief section on central banks and public debt in the 1930-1970s that strongly echoes recent @DanielaGabor's " return of monetary financing" >a great example of useful historical perspective showing the uniqueness of the current situation
transformative-responses.org/wp-content/upl…