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Oral history has always held a rather ambiguous position within the study of economics. While widely read and enjoyed, such interviews are secretly scorned, dismissed as merely a lightweight diversion. Yet, to conduct revealing and insightful work of this type is difficult, requiring a firm grasp of economics, especially individual contributions to the discipline. This article examines my own attempts to come to grips with the methodology and ideology of the Chicago School through a series of conversations with some nineteen of George Stigler's contemporaries. Oral history, if skillfully conducted, can prove to be one of the more useful tools in recapturing and understanding the past history of economics as a fiercely fought over discipline.

At times economists seem to treat research into the history of their profession as a guilty pleasure, equating it with "the love that dares not speak its name," to steal an expression from Oscar Wilde. As a field of research it retains at best an equivocal position. Should real economists waste their time amusing themselves with such a completely irrelevant and non-applicable field? This, at best, ambivalent attitude by a clear majority of the profession meant that the establishment of the first journal dedicated to this area of endeavor (History of Political Economy) served as the eagerly awaited signal for the most prestigious general journals to stop publishing articles of this nature. By the 1970s, the subject's relegation to the backwaters of the discipline translated into a generalized move to drop history of economic thought (as well as economic history) as a requirement of graduate education:the history of thought, like all other fields, is well enough served by its own specialists. These were the reasons why Stigler proposed and supported the decision of the Economics Department at the University of Chicago to abandon its history of thought requirement in 1972, before many other departments did (Rosen 1993, p. 811).

Introduction: History, culture and the price of bananas - how to study a specific economy -- Transforming bushido : the making of the modern Japanese state -- From here to paternity : an overview of the Japanese economy -- Crumbling corporate homelands : the mystery of Japanese firms -- The sinking of the salariman : mixed pleasures from laboring under an illusion -- Banking your dreams : the death of financial wizards -- Engineering a future : fiscal and industrial policy -- Monetary madness : the mystery of the Bank of Japan -- Japan über alles : trade as war by other means -- All fall down : ignoring the lessons of Japan.