'Economics and the Modern Economic Historian'

This surprised me. I was under the impression that things are moving in the opposite direction:

Economics and the Modern Economic Historian, by Ran Abramitzky, NBER Working Paper No. 21636, October 2015: Abstract I reflect on the role of modern economic history in economics. I document a substantial increase in the percentage of papers devoted to economic history in the top-5 economic journals over the last few decades. I discuss how the study of the past has contributed to economics by providing ground to test economic theory, improve economic policy, understand economic mechanisms, and answer big economic questions. Recent graduates in economic history appear to have roughly similar prospects to those of other economists in the economics job market. I speculate how the increase in availability of high quality micro level historical data, the decline in costs of digitizing data, and the use of computationally intensive methods to convert large-scale qualitative information into quantitative data might transform economic history in the future.

From the introduction to the paper:

... This sense that economists “believe history to be of small and diminishing interest” was made clear ... in 1976, when McCloskey wrote in defense of economic history a paper entitled “Does the past have useful economics?”. McCloskey concluded that the average American economist answers “no”. McCloskey showed a sharp decline in the publication of economic history papers in the top economic journals (AER, QJE, JPE). It was clear that “…this older generation of American economists did not persuade many of the younger that history is essential to economics.” ...

Today, thirty years later, economic history is far from being marginalized and overlooked by economists. To be sure, economic history remains a small field within economics, but the average economist today would answer a “yes” to the question of whether the past has useful economics. Economists increasingly recognize that historical events shape current economic development, and that current modern economies were once upon a time developing and their experience might be relevant for current developing countries. Recent debates in the US and Europe about immigration policies renewed interest in historical migration episodes. Most notably, the Great Recession of 2007-08 reminded economists of the Great Depression and other historic financial crises. Macroeconomic historian Christina Romer, a Great Depression expert, became the chief advisor of president Obama.3 Indeed, Barry Eichengreen, himself an expert on financial crises in history, started his 2011 presidential address by saying that “this has been a good crisis for economic history.”

 That economic history today is more respected and appreciated by the average economist is also reflected by an increase in economic history publications in the top-5 economic journals. The decline in economic history in the top-3 journals that McCloskey documented has been reversed...