Economic history

This article is about the academic eld. For actual

economic histories, see Economic history of the world.
For the history of economics itself, see History of
economic thought.

tory 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.

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 nancial and business history and overlaps with areas of social history such as demographic and labor history. The quantitative in this case, econometric study 1.1 United States
of economic history is also known as cliometrics.[1]
Meanwhile, in the US, the eld of economic history has
in recent decades been largely subsumed into other elds
of economics and is seen as a form of applied economics.
1 Development as a separate eld As a consequence, there are no specialist economic history graduate programs at any universities anywhere in
the country. Economic history remains as a special eld
In Germany in the late 19th century, scholars in a numcomponent of regular economics or history PhD prober of universities, led by Gustav von Schmoller, develgrams in universities including at University of Califoroped the historical school of economic history. It ignored
nia, Berkeley, Harvard University, Northwestern Univerquantitative and mathematical approaches. Historical apsity and Yale University.
proach 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 cen- 2 Economic history and economics
tury. In France, economic history was heavily inuenced
by the Annales School from the early 20th century to the Yale University economist Irving Fisher wrote in 1933
present. It exerts a worldwide inuence through its Jour- on the relationship between economics and economic hisnal Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales.[2]
tory in his Debt-Deation Theory of Great Depressions
Treating economic history as a discrete academic dis- (Econometrica, Vol. 1, No. 4: 337338):
cipline has been a contentious issue for many years.
Academics at the London School of Economics and the
The study of dis-equilibrium may proceed
University of Cambridge had numerous disputes over the
in either of two ways. We may take as our unit
separation of economics and economic history in the
for study an actual historical case of great disinterwar era. Cambridge economists believed that pure
equilibrium, such as, say, the panic of 1873;
economics involved a component of economic history
or we may take as our unit for study any conand that the two were inseparably entangled. Those at
stituent tendency, such as, say, deation, and
the LSE believed that economic history warranted its own
discover its general laws, relations to, and comcourses, research agenda and academic chair separated
binations with, other tendencies. The former
from mainstream economics.
study revolves around events, or facts; the latIn the initial period of the subjects development, the LSE
ter, around tendencies. The former is primarily
position of separating economic history from economics
economic history; the latter is primarily ecowon out. Many universities in the UK developed indenomic science. Both sorts of studies are proper
pendent programmes in economic history rooted in the
and important. Each helps the other. The panic
LSE model. Indeed, the Economic History Society had
of 1873 can only be understood in light of
its inauguration at LSE in 1926 and the University of
the various tendencies involveddeation and
Cambridge eventually established its own economic hisother; and deation can only be understood in
1

5 NOTABLE ECONOMIC HISTORIANS

the light of various historical manifestations
1873 and other.

4 Nobel Memorial Prize-winning

economic historians

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]

Have a very healthy respect for the study of economic

history, because thats the raw material out of which any
of your conjectures or testings will come.

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 aecting 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]

- Paul Samuelson (2009)[9]

Simon Kuznets won the Nobel Memorial Prize in
Economic Sciences (the Nobel Memorial Prize)
in 1971 for his empirically founded interpretation
of economic growth which has led to new and deepened insight into the economic and social structure
and process of development.
Milton Friedman won the Nobel Memorial Prize in
1976 for his achievements in the elds of consumption analysis, 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.

5 Notable economic historians

Moses Abramovitz
T. S. Ashton
Correlli Barnett

Economic history and the history

of capitalism

Main article: History of capitalism

A new eld 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 eld 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 eld 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]

Jrg Baten
Maxine Berg
Ben Bernanke
Francesco Boldizzoni
Fernand Braudel
Rondo Cameron
Sydney Checkland
Carlo M. Cipolla
Gregory Clark
Thomas C. Cochran
Nicholas Crafts

3
Louis Cullen

Deirdre McCloskey

Peter Davies

Joel Mokyr

Brad DeLong
Barry Eichengreen
Stanley Engerman

Douglass North
Cormac Grda

Charles Feinstein

Patrick K. O'Brien

Niall Ferguson

Henri Pirenne

Ronald Findlay

Karl Polanyi

Moses Israel Finley

Roderick Floud
Robert Fogel

Erik S. Reinert
Christina Romer

Milton Friedman

W. W. Rostow

Celso Furtado

Murray Rothbard

Claudia Goldin
Jack Goldstone
John Habakkuk
Earl J. Hamilton

Joseph Schumpeter
Anna Jacobson Schwartz
Larry Schweikart

Eli Heckscher

Ram Sharan Sharma

Eric Hobsbawm

Robert Skidelsky

Leo Huberman
Harold James
Georey Jones (academic)
Ibn Khaldun

Adam Smith
Graeme Snooks
Richard H. Steckel

Charles P. Kindleberger

R. H. Tawney

John Komlos

Peter Temin

Nikolai Kondratiev
Simon Kuznets
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie
David Landes
Tim Leunig

Adam Tooze
Eberhard Wchtler
Jerey Williamson
Tony Wrigley

Friedrich List
Robert Sabatino Lopez
Angus Maddison
Karl Marx

6 See also
Economic History Association

Peter Mathias

Economic History Society

Ellen McArthur

History of economic thought

9 FURTHER READING

Notes

[1] For example:

Gregory Clark (2006), A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World, Description, contents, ch. 1
link, and Google preview.
E. Aerts and H. Van der Wee, 2002. Economic History, International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences pp. 4102-410. Abstract.
[2] For example: Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogo
(2009), This Time Is Dierent: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly. Princeton. Description, ch. 1 (Varieties of
Crises and their Dates, pp. 3-20), and chapter-preview
links.

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
[2] Robert Forster, Achievements of the Annales school.
Journal of Economic History 38.01 (1978): 58-76. in JSTOR
[3] Charles P. Kindleberger (1990), Historical Economics: Art
or Science?, University of California Press, Berkeley

Barker, T. C. (1977). The Beginnings of the

Economic History Society. Economic History Review. 30 (1): 119. doi:10.2307/2595495. JSTOR
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

[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.

Deng, Kent (2014). A survey of recent research

in Chinese economic history. Journal of Economic
Surveys. Cambridge.

[5] Douglass C. North (1965). The State of Economic History, American Economic Review, 55(1/2) pp. 8691.

Field, Alexander J. (2008). Economic history.

The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics.

_____ (1994)."Economic Performance through

Time, American Economic Review, 84(3), p p.
359368. Also published as Nobel Prize Lecture.

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.

[6] Boldizzoni, Francesco (2011). The Poverty of Clio: Resurrecting Economic History. Princeton University Press.
p. 18. ISBN 9780691144009.
[7] See Jennifer Schuessler In History Departments, Its Up
With Capitalism New York Times April 6, 2013

Gras, N. S. B. (1927). The Rise and Development of Economic History. Economic History Review. 1 (1): 1234. doi:10.2307/2590668. JSTOR
2590668.

[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

Mokyr (ed.), Joyr (2003). Economic Encyclopaedia. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[9] Clarke, Conor (June 18, 2009). An Interview With Paul

Samuelson, Part Two. The Atlantic. Retrieved November 26, 2011.

Temin, Peter (2014). New Economic History in

Retrospect and Prospect (PDF). Economic History
and Economic Development. National Bureau of
Economic Research (No.w20107).

Further reading
Bairoch, Paul (1995). Economics and World History: Myths and Paradoxes. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. ISBN 0226034631.

Roy, Tirthankar (Summer 2002). Economic History and Modern India: Redening the Link.
The Journal of Economic Perspectives. American Economic Association.
16 (3): 109
130. doi:10.1257/089533002760278749. JSTOR
3216953.

10.4

Recent and forthcoming economic history conferences

10

External links

10.1

10.4 Recent and forthcoming economic

history conferences

Journals

Economic History Society Annual Conference 2010

Cliometrica: Issue & article links, v. 1, 2007

Economic History Review: Issue & article rst-page
links, v. 1927
Explorations in Economic History: Issue & article, v.
7, 1969
Journal of Economic History:
abstract links, v. 1, 1971

10.2

Issue & article-

Professional societies

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

10.5 Economic History Services

EH.Net Economic History Services Includes Economic History Encyclopedia, Ask the Professor,
Book Reviews, databases, directories, bibliographies, mailing lists, and an ination calculator.

Economic History Society (UK), publisher of the

Economic History Review

EH.Net Encyclopedia

Economic History Association (US), publisher of

the Journal of Economic History

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.

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

10.3

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 dierent countries and regions.
Maddison (2006), The World Economy, OECD,
Paris.

11

11
11.1

TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

Text

Economic history Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history?oldid=760258044 Contributors: Enchanter, SimonP, Raven

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Pgreennch, Ivan Bajlo, Bender235, Matteh, Evolauxia, Tobacman, Jerryseinfeld, Physicistjedi, TTerre~enwiki, Jumbuck, John Quiggin, Wikidea, Bkwillwm, Sean Antrim, Wragge, Ground Zero, Common Man, Bgwhite, YurikBot, TexasAndroid, Morphh, Jgrantdu,
Rjensen, Dureo, Nikkimaria, H@r@ld, Sardanaphalus, SmackBot, Jagged 85, Hmains, Chris the speller, John4820, Neo-Jay, Sadads,
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Phmoreno, Deconstructhis, Red Hurley, SieBot, Skipsievert, Anchor Link Bot, Shmooshkums, ClueBot, Tkeu, Farras Octara, Simonjcdavies, C.p.nash, Aleksd, Catuireal, WikHead, Addbot, Benjo71, Fgnievinski, LaaknorBot, Ashaktur, Blaylockjam10, Tassedethe, Lightbot, Bebestbe, Legobot, Luckas-bot, J. Milch, Yobot, Worldbruce, WikiDan61, LlywelynII, Materialscientist, LilHelpa, Obersachsebot,
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11.2

Images

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11.3

Content license

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