The annual HOPE conference, whose title this year was "MIT and the Transformation of American Economics," took place on April 26–28, 2013, at the R. David Thomas Center at Duke University.
Despite its importance--after all, MIT was or is the home institution of several Nobel Prize winners, including Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow--the groundbreaking economics work at MIT has received relatively little attention from historians of econoimcs, especially when compared with the attention scholars have given to the University of Chicago.
The conference, which was organized by Duke professor E. Roy Weintraub, examined several facets of the economics department at MIT, including, among others, growth theory, monetary theory, and operations research, as well as graduate networks, economic history, and the experience of black graduate students.
The conference papers will be published in a supplemental issue to the 2014 volume of HOPE.
The conference was funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Duke University Press, and the Center for the History of Political Economy.
For more on this year's conference, please visit the conference website.