The start of a new millennium has caused many to reflect on the past. The "Economic History Since 1950" forum was no different. The forum’s goal was to give scholars an opportunity to offer suggestions as to the most important events and influential themes within economic history during the last 50 years. Perhaps this is easier said than done. Stephen Broadberry indicates on May 17, 1999, "All historians face difficulties in writing about the recent past, but for the economic historian of the post-World War II period there is a particular problem. For the first time there is a large body of literature written at the time using the framework of modern economics and couched in quantitative terms."

Even if this is the case, historians and economists weighed in on the important issues of the previous half-century. To begin, Peter Lindert offers a list of guidelines in choosing the important themes. In his May 18, 1999 posting, he suggests that one should: 1) "Write for a wide audience, not for us," 2) "Your research project should be issue-driven, not technique-driven or data-driven or literature-driven," and 3) "Practice safe presentism."

With this in mind, here is just a sampling of the topics mentioned:

• The growth and "catch-up" of Western Europe (Stephen Broadberry on May 17, 1999)
• The rise of "the rest"- industrialization beyond North America and Japan (Alice Amsden on May 17, 1999)
• Japan and the East Asian "tigers" (Stephen Broadberry on May 17, 1999 and John Treacy on May 18, 1999)
• "The economic impact of sweeping social revolutions in race, gender and ethnicity," (Gavin Wright on May 17, 1999)
• The fall of the planned economies of Eastern Europe (Stephen Broadberry on May 17, 1999 and John Treacy on May 18, 1999)
• Environmental History (Peter Lindert on May 18, 1999)
• Industrial Location (Brian Wixted on June 20, 1999)
• The rise of the state (Peter Lindert on May 18, 1999)

Certainly, not every significant topic in economic history since 1950 can be studied or analyzed. Brad DeLong notes the difficulty in covering all of these important topics on May 18, 1999:

"…[W]e find ourselves stretched very very thin in terms of our ability to adequately cover the subject; at times the state of our discipline reminds me of small campfires dotted throughout a vast wilderness. What we see is a very small slice of what is really there to be studied."

Creating a list of important economic history topics is difficult, but the study of economic history since 1950 is essential according to Brian Wixted:

"I want to make the suggestion that the period since 1950 doesn’t require the attention of historians because it is now history, but because historians bring a different mindset…. This difference is (to my understanding) the acceptance, at least in part, that today’s outcomes are not necessarily the result of totally ‘rational’ processes (in the technical meaning of that term). In other words history does have accidents and history continues to have an impact well after it might be expected," (June 20, 1999).