ADDING A NEW DIMENSION TO ECONOMICS-HISTORICAL ANALYSIS IN ECONOMICS.

The article focuses on an increasing importance of economic history as a part of general methodology used by economists in their efforts to understand a more and more instable global economy. It shortly reviews both the evolution of economy and economic history as disciplines with their own identities and then looks at different theoretical approaches to methodological debate between supporters of cliometrics or „New Economic History” and advocates of more traditional schools of economy and, it also attempts to identify a few errors of neoclassical economics. The discussion starts from the idea that economists require, at least, a basic knowledge of economic history as it contributes to a better understanding of the context under which the contemporary economic transformations and events take place. The economic history shows that models of the "one-size-fits-all" type almost never apply, while neoclassical economic models can be successfully applied in certain but not all institutional and technological contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]