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TOWARDS A “TEXT AS DATA” APPROACH IN THE HISTORY OF ECONOMICS: AN APPLICATION TO ADAM SMITH’S CLASSICS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 January 2023

Matthieu Ballandonne Open the ORCID record for Matthieu Ballandonne [Opens in a new window]  and
Igor Cersosimo Open the ORCID record for Igor Cersosimo [Opens in a new window]
Matthieu Ballandonne
Affiliation:
Matthieu Ballandonne: ESSCA School of Management, Angers, France. Email: [email protected].
Igor Cersosimo
Affiliation:
Igor Cersosimo: ESSCA School of Management, Angers, France. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

Quantitative techniques have received increasing attention in the history and methodology of economics. Nonetheless, a “text as data” approach has mostly been overlooked and its applicability to the history of economics remains to be examined. To understand what we gain from such quantitative techniques in relation to existing historical analyses, we apply some “text as data” techniques to Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations. We explore the books’ topics, styles, and sentiments. We show how word frequency analysis can be used to examine the differences between the books, shed light on conceptual discussions, and reveal an important stylistic aspect, specifically Smith’s use of personal pronouns. Style analysis shows the similarities and differences in terms of lexical richness and readability between the two books. We also show the limitations of a third technique, sentiment analysis, when applied to historical economic texts.

Type
Article
Information
Journal of the History of Economic Thought , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , March 2023 , pp. 27 - 49
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the History of Economics Society

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Footnotes

We are very grateful to the reviewers and the editor, Pedro Garcia Duarte, for their helpful comments and advice. We are also indebted to Maria Pia Paganelli and Philippe Fontaine for their suggestions on early drafts of the article, and to Robert Lysiak for his careful proofreading. Previous versions of the article were presented at the internal research seminar of the Institut de la Transformation Digitale (2021) at ESSCA School of Management (Angers, France), and at the online workshop on “Digital Methods in History and Economics” (2021) organized by the Universität Hamburg (Hamburg, Germany). We thank the organizers of these events and all participants for the helpful discussions.

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