The History of Economics Society (HES) has traveled a long way throughout its fifty conferences, from the first one organized by Warren Samuels and Vincent Tarascio on May 30 and 31, 1973, in Chicago, to the fiftieth annual meetings that took place on June 23 to 25, 2023, in Vancouver, Canada. This journey can be analyzed in different ways, and here we focus on the presidential addresses delivered as a guide to our analysis. From the conference programs we identified a total of forty-four presidential addresses: the first to appear on the conference program was Vincent Tarascio’s speech on Vilfredo Pareto, on the second day of the Boston conference in 1975. Since 1975, presidential addresses have become a regular feature of the conference, with rare exceptions such as the 1977 Irvine, CA, conference or in the recent years when Marcel Boumans’s presidential address was postponed from 2020 to 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Of the forty-four presidential addresses in the history of HES, we analyzed the forty-one that were published in scholarly journals (see Table 1). However, we could not find whether two presidential addresses—specifically Joseph Spengler, HES conference 1976, Chicago; and Carl Uhr, HES conference 1978, Toronto—have been published. Moreover, Robert Leonard has not published the address he delivered at the 2015 HES conference but two related papers.

The History of Economics Society (HES) initiated the History of Economics Society Bulletin (HESB) in 1979. Discussed at the 1978 meetings of the HES, the HESB was first conceived of as something “less” than History of Political Economy (HOPE)—i.e., an academic journal with a defined editorial line—but also “more” than just a newsletter for HES members (Caldwell 2021; Vaughn, this issue). Edited by Karen E. Vaughn (1979 to 1983) and William O. Thweatt (1984 to 1989), the HESB began by publishing short notes and abstracts of papers presented at the annual meetings of the HES. Research articles (i.e., peer-reviewed documents) appeared for the first time in 1988 and book reviews in 1989. A year after, the HESB became the Journal of the History of Economic Thought (JHET), a full-fledged society journal under the editorship of Donald Walker (1990 to 1998). First published directly by its editor and the HES, the JHET started producing four yearly issues in 1998 under contract with Carfax as publisher. Carfax was eventually purchased by Taylor & Francis (Medema, this issue), and a new contract was signed with Cambridge University Press, both during Steven Medema’s editorship (1999 to 2008).1

In 1978, the Executive Committee of the History of Economics Society voted to begin publishing the HES Bulletin to serve as a regular means of communication among members. It was intended to include short notes, research inquiries, and reports about events important to Society members. Karen Vaughn of George Mason University was its first editor, a position she held until 1983. During those years, the content grew too include, in addition to notes and research inquiries, reports on the annual meeting, abstracts of papers presented, and publication of the annual Presidential and Distinguished Scholar Addresses. In 1983, the editorship passed on the William Thweat who expanded the content to include more scholarly papers, leading the way to the eventual establishment of the Journal of the History of Economic Thought.

In this article, Steven Medema provides some reflections on his tenure as editor of the Journal of the History of Economic Thought (1999 – 2008). This was a time of significant transition in the life of the journal, and the successful navigation of this period provides an excellent illustration of how much an editor and a journal rely on the assistance and support of both key individuals and the broader community of scholars in the field.

A personal account of their experiences by Marcel Boumans and Evelyn Forget as JHET editors of issues 31 (1) to 35 (4).

The invitation is to discuss my JHET editorship, which ran from 2013 to 2018, in light of the once and future challenges of the journal. After accepting it, I gathered my recollections, perused back issues of the journal, and finally reviewed my correspondence and reports to the HES Executive Committee.