The Economists’ Papers website builds on R. P. Sturges’s Economists’ Papers, 1750-1959 published in 1975 (Durham: Duke University Press). It was the outcome of a project initiated in 1969 by participants in the annual UK History of Economic Thought conference (which later became THETS). For an early report from the committee who supervised Sturges’s work, consisting of R.D. Collison Black, A.W. Coats, B.A. Corry, R.H. Ellis, Lord Robbins and D.N. Winch, see the History of Economic Thought Newsletter, issue 4 Spring 1970.
From the start the project received generous support from the Royal Economic Society (RES) as part of its mission since it was founded in 1890 to support scholarly editions of major economic works.
The current website revives an earlier attempt to make the directory available online and to update and extend it. Since 2025 the contents of the site are administered by The History of Economic Thought Society (THETS). RES continues to host and provide support for the pages.
