Economic history?qsrc=3044
Economic history is the study of how economic phenomena evolved from a historical perspective. Analysis in economic history is undertaken using a combination of historical methods, statistical methods and by applying economic theory to historical situations. The topic includes business history, financial history and overlaps with areas of social history such as demographic history and labor history. Quantitative (econometric) economic history is also referred to as cliometrics.[1] Quantitative economic history had its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s. In recent years it has been a small factor in history departments, and has been marginalized as well in economics departments.[2]
Development as a separate field
Treating economic history as an 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 theory 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 and the University of Glasgow retain separate economic history departments and stand-alone undergraduate and graduate programmes in economic history. The University of Warwick now has the greatest number of economic historians working in an economics department anywhere in the UK, but has virtually no PhD students specialising in the subject. The LSE, Glasgow and the University of Oxford together train the vast majority of economic historians coming through the British higher education system.
In the US, economic history has for a long time been regarded as a form of applied economics. As a consequence, there are no specialist economic history graduate programmes at any mainstream university anywhere in the country. Instead economic history is taught as a special field component of regular economics PhD programmes in some places, including at University of California, Berkeley, Harvard University, and Yale University.
Relationship between economics and economic history
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: 337-338): '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 involved ― deflation and other; and deflation can only be understood in the light of various historical manifestations ― 1873 and other.'
There is a school of thought among economic historians that splits economic history ― the study of how economic phenomena evolved in the past ― from historical economics ― testing 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 professional society for economic historians in Europe is called the European Historical Economics Society to reflect this emphasis. Most economic historians today, however, do not make this fine distinction between the two schools of thought and the term historical economics has gone out of fashion somewhat.
Rather with quantitative approach to economic history the New economic history or also called cliometrics refers to the systematic use of economic theory and econometric techniques to study economic history. Specifically 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 inclusion of history is crucial in formulating solid economic theory. Cliometrics is a type of counterfactual history.
Nobel Prize winning economic historians
Milton Friedman won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1976 for "his achievements in the fields 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 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 in 1990 with Harry Markowitz and William Sharpe.
Notable economic historians
See also
- EAEPE
- International Economic History Association
- Price revolution
- Great Depression
- The Great Moderation
- History of economic thought
- History of international trade
- Anthropometric history
- The economic history of Europe
- List of recessions
- List of regions by past GDP (PPP) per capita - For historical GDP per capita (purchasing power parity) figures from 1 AD to 2003
- List of countries by past GDP (nominal) - For historical GDP (nominal) figures from 1998 to 2003
Notes
- ↑ Robert Whaples, "Cliometrics" in Steven Durlauf and Lawrence Blume, eds. The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics (2nd ed. 2008)
- ↑ Robert Whaples, "Is Economic History a Neglected Field of Study?," Historically Speaking (April 2010) v. 11#2 pp 17-20, with responses pp 20-27
- ↑ Charles P. Kindleberger (1990), Historical Economics: Art or Science?, University of California Press, Berkeley
References
- Rondo Cameron and Larry Neal (2003, 4th ed.) A Concise Economic History of the World: From Paleolithic Times to the Present, 480 pp., Oxford. Description and Table of Contents,
- N.F.R. Crafts (1987). "economic history," The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, v. 2, pp. 37–42.
- Alexander J. Field (2008). "economic history," The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Abstract.
- Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson Schwartz (1963). A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960. Princeton. Page-searchable links to chapters on 1929-41 and 1948-60
- John Hicks (1969). A Theory of Economic History. Oxford: Clarendon. Scroll to chapter-preview links.
- Joel Mokyr, ed. (2003), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 5 vols. Description.
External links
Articles and lectures
- On global economic history by Jan Luiten van Zanden. Explores the idea of the inevitability of the Industrial Revolution.
Professional societies
Historical statistics
Recent and forthcoming economic history conferences | Economic History Services
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