Economic history

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Economic history is the study of economies or economic phenomena of the past. Analysis in economic history
is undertaken using a combination of historical methods, statistical methods and the application of economic
theory to historical situations and institutions. The topic includes financial and business history and overlaps
with areas of social history such as demographic and labor history. The quantitative in this case,
econometric study of economic history is also known as cliometrics.[1]

Contents
1 Development as a separate field
1.1 United States
2 Economic history and economics
3 Economic history and the history of capitalism
4 Nobel Memorial Prize-winning economic historians
5 Notable economic historians
6 See also
7 Notes
8 References
9 Further reading
10 External links
10.1 Journals
10.2 Professional societies
10.3 Historical statistics
10.4 Recent and forthcoming economic history conferences
10.5 Economic History Services

Development as a separate field

In Germany in the late 19th century, scholars in a number of universities, led by Gustav von Schmoller,
developed the historical school of economic history. It ignored quantitative and mathematical approaches.
Historical approach dominated German and French scholarship for most of the 20th century. The approach was
spread to Great Britain by William Ashley, 1860-1927, and dominated British economic history for much of the
20th century. In France, economic history was heavily influenced by the Annales School from the early 20th
century to the present. It exerts a worldwide influence through its Journal Annales. Histoire, Sciences
Sociales.[2]

Treating economic history as a discrete academic discipline has been a contentious issue for many years.
Academics at the London School of Economics and the University of Cambridge had numerous disputes over
the separation of economics and economic history in the interwar era. Cambridge economists believed that pure
economics involved a component of economic history and that the two were inseparably entangled. Those at
the LSE believed that economic history warranted its own courses, research agenda and academic chair
separated from mainstream economics.

In the initial period of the subject's development, the LSE position of separating economic history from
economics won out. Many universities in the UK developed independent programmes in economic history
rooted in the LSE model. Indeed, the Economic History Society had its inauguration at LSE in 1926 and the
University of Cambridge eventually established its own economic history programme. However, the past
twenty years have witnessed the widespread closure of these separate programmes in the UK and the
integration of the discipline into either history or economics departments. Only the LSE retains a separate
economic history department and stand-alone undergraduate and graduate programme in economic history.
Cambridge, Glasgow, the LSE and Oxford together train the vast majority of economic historians coming
through the British higher education system today.

United States

Meanwhile, in the US, the field of economic history has in recent decades been largely subsumed into other
fields of economics and is seen as a form of applied economics. As a consequence, there are no specialist
economic history graduate programs at any universities anywhere in the country. Economic history remains as a
special field component of regular economics or history PhD programs in universities including at University
of California, Berkeley, Harvard University, Northwestern University and Yale University.

Economic history and economics

Yale University economist Irving Fisher wrote in 1933 on the relationship between economics and economic
history in his "Debt-Deflation Theory of Great Depressions" (Econometrica, Vol. 1, No. 4: 337338):

The study of dis-equilibrium may proceed in either of two ways. We may take as our unit for study
an actual historical case of great dis-equilibrium, such as, say, the panic of 1873; or we may take as
our unit for study any constituent tendency, such as, say, deflation, and discover its general laws,
relations to, and combinations with, other tendencies. The former study revolves around events, or
facts; the latter, around tendencies. The former is primarily economic history; the latter is primarily
economic science. Both sorts of studies are proper and important. Each helps the other. The panic
of 1873 can only be understood in light of the various tendencies involveddeflation and other;
and deflation can only be understood in the light of various historical manifestations1873 and
other.

There is a school of thought among economic historians that splits economic historythe study of how
economic phenomena evolved in the pastfrom historical economicstesting the generality of economic
theory using historical episodes. US economic historian Charles P. Kindleberger explained this position in his
1990 book Historical Economics: Art or Science?.[3]

The new economic history, also known as cliometrics, refers to the systematic use of economic theory and/or
econometric techniques to the study of economic history. The term cliometrics was originally coined by
Jonathan R. T. Hughes and Stanley Reiter in 1960 and refers to Clio, who was the muse of history and heroic
poetry in Greek mythology. Cliometricians argue their approach is necessary because the application of theory
is crucial in writing solid economic history, while historians generally oppose this view warning against the risk
of generating anachronisms. Early cliometrics was a type of counterfactual history. However, counterfactualism
is no longer its distinctive feature. Some have argued that cliometrics had its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s
and that it is now neglected by economists and historians.[4]

In recent decades economic historians, following Douglass North, have tended to move away from narrowly
quantitative studies toward institutional, social, and cultural history affecting the evolution of economies.[5][a 1]
However, this trend has been criticized, most forcefully by Francesco Boldizzoni, as a form of economic
imperialism "extending the neoclassical explanatory model to the realm of social relations."[6] Conversely,
economists in other specializations have started to write on topics concerning economic history.[a 2]

Economic history and the history of capitalism

A new field calling itself the "History of Capitalism" has emerged in US history departments since about the
year 2000. It includes many topics traditionally associated with the field of economic history, such as insurance,
banking and regulation, the political dimension of business, and the impact of capitalism on the middle classes,
the poor and women and minorities. The field utilizes the existing research of business history, but has sought
to make it more relevant to the concerns of history departments in the United States, including by having
limited or no discussion of individual business enterprises.[7][8]

Nobel Memorial Prize-winning economic historians

Simon Kuznets won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic
Sciences ("the Nobel Memorial Prize") in 1971 "for his
Have a very healthy respect for the study
empirically founded interpretation of economic growth which of economic history, because that's the
has led to new and deepened insight into the economic and raw material out of which any of your
social structure and process of development". conjectures or testings will come.
Milton Friedman won the Nobel Memorial Prize in 1976 for
"his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, - Paul Samuelson (2009)[9]
monetary history and theory and for his demonstration of the
complexity of stabilization policy".
Robert Fogel and Douglass North won the Nobel Memorial Prize in 1993 for "having renewed research
in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic
and institutional change".
Merton Miller, who started his academic career teaching economic history at the LSE, won the Nobel
Memorial Prize in 1990 with Harry Markowitz and William F. Sharpe.

Notable economic historians

Moses Abramovitz Earl J. Hamilton
T. S. Ashton Eli Heckscher
Correlli Barnett Eric Hobsbawm
Jrg Baten Leo Huberman
Maxine Berg Harold James
Ben Bernanke Geoffrey Jones (academic)
Francesco Boldizzoni Ibn Khaldun
Fernand Braudel Charles P. Kindleberger
Rondo Cameron John Komlos
Sydney Checkland Nikolai Kondratiev
Carlo M. Cipolla Simon Kuznets
Gregory Clark Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie
Thomas C. Cochran David Landes
Nicholas Crafts Tim Leunig
Louis Cullen Friedrich List
Peter Davies Robert Sabatino Lopez
Brad DeLong Angus Maddison
Barry Eichengreen Karl Marx
Stanley Engerman Peter Mathias
Charles Feinstein Ellen McArthur
Niall Ferguson Deirdre McCloskey
Ronald Findlay Joel Mokyr
Moses Israel Finley Douglass North
Roderick Floud Cormac Grda
Robert Fogel Patrick K. O'Brien
Milton Friedman Henri Pirenne
Celso Furtado Karl Polanyi
Claudia Goldin Erik S. Reinert
Jack Goldstone Christina Romer
John Habakkuk W. W. Rostow
 Murray Rothbard Richard H. Steckel
Joseph Schumpeter R. H. Tawney
Anna Jacobson Schwartz Peter Temin
Larry Schweikart Adam Tooze
Ram Sharan Sharma Eberhard Wchtler
Robert Skidelsky Jeffrey Williamson
Adam Smith Tony Wrigley
Graeme Snooks

See also
Economic History Association
Economic History Society
History of economic thought

Notes
1. For example:
Gregory Clark (2006), A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic Historyof the World, Description (http://press.princeto
n.edu/titles/8461.html), contents (http://press.princeton.edu/TOCs/c8461.html), ch. 1 link (http://press.princeton.edu/cha
pters/s8461.pdf), and Google preview (https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=i-PLg2PsNd4C&oi=fnd&pg=P
T1&dq=+Long-run+equilibrium&ots=fF5GxnCIYm&sig=3ZpUcXAStipXCCAcIZvOwFh7aCM#v=onepage&q&f=fal
se).
E. Aerts and H. Van der Wee, 2002. "Economic History," International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral
Sciences pp. 4102-410. Abstract (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B0080430767026401) .
2. For example: Carmen M. Reinhartand Kenneth S. Rogoff (2009), This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial
Folly. Princeton. Description (http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8973.html),ch. 1 ("Varieties of Crises and their Dates,"
pp. 3-20) (http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8973.pdf) , and chapter-preview links. (https://books.google.com/books?id
=ak5fLB24ircC&printsec=frontcover&source=find&pg=PR7gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false)

References
1. See, for example, "Cliometrics" by Robert Whaples in S. Durlauf and L. Blume (eds.), The New Palgrave Dictionary of
Economics, 2nd ed. (2008). Abstract (http://www.dictionaryofeconomics.com/article?id=pde2008_C000173&edition=cu
rrent&q=Economic%20history&topicid=&result_number=7)
2. Robert Forster, "Achievements of the Annales school."Journal of Economic History38.01 (1978): 58-76.in JSTOR (htt
p://www.jstor.org/stable/2119315)
3. Charles P. Kindleberger (1990), Historical Economics: Art or Science?(http://www.escholarship.org/editions/view?docI
d=ft287004zv;brand=ucpress), University of California Press, Berkeley
4. Whaples, Robert (2010). "Is Economic History a Neglected Field of Study?". Historically Speaking. 11 (2): 1720 &
2027 (responses). doi:10.1353/hsp.0.0109(https://doi.org/10.1353%2Fhsp.0.0109).
5. Douglass C. North (1965). "The State of Economic History ," American Economic Review, 55(1/2) pp. 86 (http://www.jst
or.org/pss/1816246)-91.
_____ (1994)."Economic Performance through T ime," American Economic Review, 84(3), p p. 359 (http://www.j
stor.org/pss/2118057)-368. Also published as NobelPrize Lecture. (http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic
s/laureates/1993/north-lecture.html)
6. Boldizzoni, Francesco(2011). The Poverty of Clio: Resurrecting Economic History (http://press.princeton.edu/titles/947
6.html). Princeton University Press. p. 18.ISBN 9780691144009.
7. See Jennifer Schuessler "In History Departments, It
s Up With Capitalism" New York Times April 6, 2013 (https://www.
nytimes.com/2013/04/07/education/in-history-departments-its-up-with-capitalism.html?_r=0)
8. Lou Galambos, "Is This a Decisive Moment for the History of Business, Economic History , and the History Of
Capitalism? Essays in Economic & Business History(2014) v. 32 pp 1-18 online (http://www.ebhsoc.org/journal/index.p
hp/journal/article/download/271/253)
9. Clarke, Conor (June 18, 2009)."An Interview With Paul Samuelson, Part Two" (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc
hive/2009/06/an-interview-with-paul-samuelson-part-two/19627/) . The Atlantic. Retrieved November 26, 2011.

Further reading
 Bairoch, Paul (1995). Economics and World History: Myths and Paradoxes. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. ISBN 0226034631.
Barker, T. C. (1977). "The Beginnings of the Economic History Society". Economic History Review. 30
(1): 119. JSTOR 2595495. doi:10.2307/2595495.
Baten, Jrg; Muschallik, Julia (2012). "The Global Status of Economic History". Economic History of
Developing Regions. 27 (1): 93113. doi:10.1080/20780389.2012.682390.
Cameron, Rondo; Neal, Larry (2003). A Concise Economic History of the World: From Paleolithic Times
to the Present (4th ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195127056.
Cipolla, C. M. (1991). Between History and Economics: An Introduction to Economic History. Oxford:
Blackwell. ISBN 0631166815.
Costa, Dora; Demeulemeester, Jean-Luc; Diebolt, Claude (2007). "What is 'Cliometrica'?". Cliometrica.
1 (1): 16. doi:10.1007/s11698-006-0001-1.
Crafts, N.F.R. (1987). "Economic history". The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics. vol.2.
Kadish, Alon. Historians, Economists, and Economic History (2012) pp 3-35 excerpt
Deng, Kent (2014). "A survey of recent research in Chinese economic history". Journal of Economic
Surveys. Cambridge.
Field, Alexander J. (2008). "Economic history". The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics.
Galambos, Lou (2014). "Is This a Decisive Moment for the History of Business, Economic History, and
the History Of Capitalism?". Essays in Economic & Business History.
Gras, N. S. B. (1927). "The Rise and Development of Economic History". Economic History Review. 1
(1): 1234. JSTOR 2590668. doi:10.2307/2590668.
Mokyr (ed.), Joyr (2003). "Economic Encyclopaedia". The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Temin, Peter (2014). "New Economic History in Retrospect and Prospect" (PDF) . Economic History and
Economic Development. National Bureau of Economic Research (No.w20107).
Roy, Tirthankar (Summer 2002). "Economic History and Modern India: Redefining the Link". The
Journal of Economic Perspectives. American Economic Association. 16 (3): 109130. JSTOR 3216953.
doi:10.1257/089533002760278749.

External links
Journals Wikimedia Commons has
media related to Economic
Cliometrica: Issue & article links, v. 1, 2007 history.
Economic History Review: Issue & article first-page links, v.
1927 Wikisource has original
Explorations in Economic History: Issue & article, v. 7, 1969 works on the topic:
Journal of Economic History: Issue & article-abstract links, v. 1, Economic history and
1971 conditions

Professional societies

Economic History Society (UK), publisher of the Economic History Review

Economic History Association (US), publisher of the Journal of Economic History
The European Association for Banking and Financial History e. V., publisher of the Financial History
Review
International Economic History Association (IEHA)

Historical statistics
Groningen Growth and Development Centre Total Economy DatabaseSeries on GDP, Population,
Employment, Hours worked, GDP per capita and productivity (per person and per hour) from 1950 up to
2006
Our World In Dataweb publication by Max Roser (at the University of Oxford) that visualises how
living standards around the world changed. Makes data available and covers a wide range of topics:
Trends in health, food provision, the growth and distribution of incomes, violence, rights, wars, energy
 use, education, environmental changes and many other aspects are empirically analysed and visualised in
this open access web publication.
Global Finance data series
Historicalstatistics.orgLinks to historical economic statistics for different countries and regions.
Maddison (2006), The World Economy, OECD, Paris.

Recent and forthcoming economic history confer ences

Economic History Society Annual Conference 2010
Economic History Association Meetings 2010
XV World Economic History Congress 2009
XVI World Economic History Congress 2012
Eighth Conference of the European Historical Economics Association

Economic History Services

EH.Net Economic History Services Includes Economic History Encyclopedia, Ask the Professor, Book
Reviews, databases, directories, bibliographies, mailing lists, and an inflation calculator.
EH.Net Encyclopedia
EHE An Economic History of Europe For students of economic history, includes links to major
databases, technology descriptions, examples of use of data, a forum for economic historians.

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Categories: Economic history studies Schools of economic thought History of economic thought
Academic disciplines

This page was last edited on 9 June 2017, at 14:38.

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