The year 1987 marked the birth of The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics. John Eatwell, Murray Milgate, and Peter Newman stood at the helm as editors for this four-volume project.
Steven N. Durlauf and Lawrence E. Blume edited the second edition while J. Barkley Rosser Jr. served as co-editor until his untimely demise during the project's lifespan. Jayati Ghosh, Esteban Pérez Caldentey, and Matías Vernengo will lead the upcoming fourth edition scheduled for publication in 2027.
Thirteen Nobel Laureates in Economics contributed to the first edition while it was being published. The number of Nobel laureate contributors grew from thirteen in 1987 to thirty-six by the final print version available in 2018.
Murray Milgate noted that New Palgrave downplayed mathematics compared to leading economic journals with only 24% of columns containing any mathematics requiring expensive hand-typesetting. George Stigler criticized the inclusion of dozens of articles in mathematical economics for failing intuitive introductions and stated these articles targeted fellow specialists rather than tolerably competent economists.
Robert M. Solow criticized the 1987 edition for slighting mainstream economics through excessive space allocation to Marxist economics and Austrian persuasion as dissenting fringes within academic economics. He identified Post-Keynesians and neo-Ricardian schools as receiving disproportionate coverage according to his assessment.