Science & invention
Deirdre McCloskey
born 1942 · economist, economic historian
Economic historian known for The Rhetoric of Economics and the Bourgeois Era trilogy, born in Ann Arbor in 1942.
- Born
Ann Arbor, Michigan
age 84- Birth name
- Donald Nansen McCloskey
- Field
- Science & invention
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
McCloskey was born in Ann Arbor in 1942. Her link to the Detroit region is her birth; her education and career took place at Harvard, the University of Chicago, the University of Iowa and the University of Illinois at Chicago, and since 2023 at the Cato Institute. Trained as an economic historian of Britain, she was a co-founder of the Cliometrics Society, which applies statistical methods to economic history. In The Rhetoric of Economics (1985) she argued that economists persuade through metaphor and storytelling as well as proof, and with Stephen Ziliak she criticized the misuse of statistical significance. Her Bourgeois Era trilogy argues that the great modern rise in living standards grew out of new ideas that gave dignity to trade and innovation. She described her 1995 gender transition in the memoir Crossing (1999).
Highlights
- The Rhetoric of Economics (1985)
- Bourgeois Era trilogy (2006–2016)
- The Cult of Statistical Significance (2008, with Stephen Ziliak)
- President of the Economic History Association and the Social Science History Association
- Born in Ann Arbor, 1942