Introduction

Takashi Negishi’s main fields of research are economic theory and the history of economic thought. He has always insisted that economists cannot do without the history of the subject and has impressively documented the fecundity of blending an interest in theory and the history of doctrines. Negishi’s sense of the dependence of modern economic thought on the contributions of past authors, his proven opposition to ‘provincialism in time’, as Lionel Robbins dubbed the attitude of some contemporaries to ignore the breadth and depth of wisdom contained in the treasure trove which is the history of economic thought, is well epitomized in the following passage taken from a paper in which he compared the theories of production and distribution of Karl Marx and Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk:

In the Chino-Japanese system of zodiacal symbols, to count years, each year is given the name of an animal, for example, a tiger for 1818, a boar for 1851, and a rooster for 1933. This address is, therefore, to express a prowling rooster’s view of how a big tiger roared and how a wild boar dashed, since it is believed that one took on the character of the animal of one’s birth year.