ABSTRACT
Professor Kenneth Arrow's thoughtful paper came to rest, as read it, on the incapacity of modern economic analysis to deal with the full range of variables at work in economic history and on the potentialities for mutual reinforcement by the disciplines. This note is designed to sharpen the proposition and to draw certain implications for a more appropriate relation of economic theory both to economic history and to problems in the contemporary world economy. Professor Arrow referred to the vitality formerly exhibited by business cycle history. That vitality came from a determination to understand the business cycle and to alleviate its grave human and social costs. This aspiration led Wesley C. Mitchell, D. H. Robertson, A. C. Pigou, and some of in the next generation to concern with the history as well as the theory of business cycles.
