1. Introduction

For other relevant examples, I would suggest the following titles: Joel Mokyr. The Enlightened Economy: Britain and the Industrial Revolution, 1700–1850, London, Penguin Books, 2009; Deirdre McCloskey. Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World, Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 2010; Douglass C. North & Robert Paul Thomas. The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1973; Douglass C. North. Understanding the Process of Economic Change, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2005.

Marcel Boyer. La performance économique décevante du Québec au cours des vingt-cinq dernières années, Montréal, Institut économique de Montréal, 2007; Gérard Bélanger & Jean-Luc Migué. “The Paradox of Slow Growth, High Income Regions”, Economic Affairs, 2007, Vol. 27, No. 3, pp. 57–64; Jean-Luc Migué. Étatisme et Déclin du Québec: Bilan de la Révolution Tranquille, Montréal, Éditions Varia, 1999.

Lowell Galloway & Richard Vedder. “Rating Presidential Performance”, in: John V. Denson (Ed.), Reassessing the Presidency: The Rise of the Executive State and the Decline of Freedom, Auburn, GA, Von Mises Institute, 2001, Vol. 1–32; Mark Taylor. “An Economic Ranking of the US Presidents, 1789–2009”, PS: Political Science & Politics, 2012, Vol. 45, No. 04, pp. 596–604.

Robert Fogel. The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2000; Mark Gugliemo & Werner Troesken. “The Gilded Age”, in: Price Fishback (Ed.), Government and the American Economy, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2007, pp. 255–283; Amity Shlaes. The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, New York, Harper Perennial, 2008.

Jonah Goldberg. “Might versus Right”, National Review, 25 October 2002, [http://​www.​nationalreview.​com/​articles/​205314/​might-vs-right/​jonah-goldberg##] (Page viewed 8 May 2011).

Monique Ebell & Albrecht Ritschl. Real Origins of the Great Depression: Monopoly Power, Unions and the American Business Cycle in the 1920s. London, Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics and Political Science, 2008; Harold Cole & Lee Ohanian. “New Deal Policies and the Persistence of the Great Depression: A General Equilibrium Analysis”, Journal of Political Economy, 2004, Vol. 112, No. 4, pp. 779–816; Gene Smiley. Rethinking the Great Depression: A New View of Its Causes and Consequences, Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee. 2002.

Ibid ., p. 71.

Such is the goal of econometrics, i.e. the rigorous statistical and empirical study of economic phenomena. This discipline, combined with a systematic application of economic theory, produces convincing results that are nonetheless disregarded by the majority of historians of Québec, who either ignore its usefulness or treat it with outright contempt. Robin Cowan et Dominique Foray. “Evolutionary Economics and the Counterfactual Threat: On the Nature and Role of Counterfactual History as an Empirical Tool in Economics”, Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 2002, Vol. 12, No. 5, pp. 539–562. Moreover, the counterfactual rationale is based on the idea of there being “conditions” determined by “scientific laws” and “factual conditions” derived from theory and not from an attempt to model a parallel world. See Nelson Goodman. Fact, Fiction and Forecast, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1983, pp. 3–7. Finally, we have Karl Popper who proves that any observation and the very understanding of any fact depend on an interpretive framework. Karl Popper. The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Londres, Routledge, 1959 [2002].

Niall Ferguson. The Pity of War: Explaining World War I, New York, Basic Books, 2000; Gary J. Kornblith. “Rethinking the Coming of the Civil War: A Counterfactual Exercise”, Journal of American History, 2003, Vol. 90, No. 1, pp. 76–105.