Events

Cities, Land, and Space: A History of "Urban Economics" as a Field
"Urban Economics" is an elusive object in a way that most economic fields are not. Indeed, economic, just like other mature science, is organized in fields, specialties and research programs. These are sometimes studied more as “cognitive” divisions, sometimes more as organizational and professional identities. They are sometimes tied to the identity of scientists themselves, sometimes to their research objects or questions. In economics, those cognitive and professional divisions have been quite stable over time and embedded into a consistent disciplinary structure. An intellectual reason for both the stability of fields and the mobility of economists between them is the strengthening of “core” models and methods in the postwar decades. Other scholars have pointed to the unusually strong hierarchical structure of economics and clear boundaries with other sciences.

Béatrice Cherrier is a historian of economics. She is a CNRS researcher, affiliated with CREST, and an associate professor at École Polytechnique. Cherrier's overarching research agenda is to understand the perceived rise of applied economics since the 1970s. She is currently studying the question how seminars, workshops, and conferences have shaped the history of economics with Aurélien Saidi.