Eli Ginzberg: The Economist as a Public Intellectual

The world of Eli Ginzberg can readily be thought of as a triptych - a career in three parts. In his early years, Ginzberg’s work was dedicated to understanding the history of economics, from Adam Smith to C. Wesley Mitchell, and placing that understanding in what might well thought of as economic ethnography. Such studies took Ginzberg on travels from Wales in the United Kingdom to California in the United States. The poignant account of Welsh miners in an era of economic depression and technological change is a landmark work, and of a cross country trip of the first year of the New Deal provides insight and evaluation that can scarcely be reproduced in present writings.