Econ 210A, Introduction to Economic History

Class Information

Economics 210A is required of Ph.D. students in Economics in the first year of the graduate program. The course is designed to introduce a selection of themes from the contemporary economic history literature, not to present a narrative account of world economic history. Emphasis is placed on the uses of economic theory and quantitative methods in history and on the insights a knowledge of history can give to the practicing economist.

Memo Questions

April 25
We have three topics for April 25: The Great Divergence, the Great Moderation and the Great Recession. Try to sum up your thoughts on one--and only one--of the three:

--What, in your view, is right and what is wrong with Lant Pritchett's attempt to document and account for the rise in global relative inequality from 1800 to 1980?
--Why didn't Raghu Rajan's fears about the dangers of increased "financial sophistication" have more purchase in economists' thought as of the mid-2000s?
--What do we really know and not know about why the economy falls to pieces after a financial crisis?

April 11
The onset of the Great Depression, as opposed to its subsequent worsening and then the recovery, remains the most difficult phase of this historic business cycle to understand. Do you agree, and if so why? Do the best you can, in this short essay, to provide a convincing account of the onset of the Depression.

April 4
Several prominent presidential candidates have recommended that the United States should return to a form of the gold standard. Are there aspects of historical experience with the gold standard discussed in this week's readings that have not been adequately addressed in that public discourse, but should be?

March 21
From our present perspective, what did Barry Eichengreen and Michael Bordo miss back in 2002 when they tried to draw lessons for the then future about financial crises from the pre-1914 record of growth, development, and financial deepening?

March 14
Which were more spatially integrated in 19th century United States: capital or labor markets? What do you see as the most important economic, historical and institutional factors accounting for the difference?

March 7
Most of the literature on 19th century finance focuses on banks rather than capital markets as vehicles for financial intermediation. Is this emphasis an accurate reflection of the historical reality? If so, what can account for it?

February 29
By the end of the nineteenth century, the classic Industrial Revolution technologies of coal, steam, textile machinery, rails, locomotives, and precision metalworking--plus a large number of follow-on technologies, as witnessed by the growth of a Johannesburg centered around leading-edge organic chemicals--were or could be profitable pretty much everywhere in the world, if the organization and resources could be assembled. Why then did industrialization spread from Britain in the years up to 1900 only to western Europe, the temperate zones of the Americas and Australasia, and Japan? What answers do this week's readings suggest to you?

February 22
Robert Allen for Britain and Peter Temin for the U.S. (in Temin's case, channeling earlier historians like Rothbarth and Habakkuk) both argue that high real wages combined with abundant resources led to a distinctive pattern of industrialization. Along with obvious similarities, their arguments also display important differences. What are these differences and for what do they matter?

February 15
To what extent should we view the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Britain as a unique turning point in economic and social development?

February 8
Slavery and Serfdom
Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations has a theory about unfree labor. It is, he says, economically inefficient. But wherever demand is very high relative to supply masters will resort to slave labor because it yields them powerful psychic income:

The experience of all ages and nations, I believe, demonstrates that the work done by slaves, though it appears to cost only their maintenance,is in the end the dearest of any…. Whatever work he does beyond what is sufficient to purchase his own maintenance, can be squeezed out of him by violence only, and not by any interest of his own. In ancient Italy, how much the cultivation of corn degenerated,how unprofitable it became to the master, when it fell under the management of slaves, is remarked both by Pliny and Columella….

The pride of man makes him love to domineer, and nothing mortifies him so much as to be obliged to condescend to persuade his inferiors. Wherever the law allows it, and the nature of the work can afford it, therefore, he will generally prefer the service of slaves to that of freemen. The planting of sugar and tobacco can afford the expense of slave cultivation. The raising of corn, it seems, in the present times, cannot. In the English colonies, of which the principal produce is corn, the far greater part of the work is done by freemen…. The profits of a sugar plantation in any of our West Indian colonies, are generally much greater than those of any other cultivation that is known either in Europe or America; and the profits of a tobacco plantation, though inferior to those of sugar, are superior to those of corn, as has already been observed. Both can afford the expense of slave cultivation…

February 1
Does the Agricultural Revolution deserve its "R"? That is, is it well-conceptualized as a "Revolution" rather than as something much slower and much more gradual?

Lecture Notes