Economic History Research Articles

At the intersection of economic history and contemporary regional development: insights from a Swedish ‘bruksort’

ABSTRACT In this paper, we explore contemporary regional development in a historic industrial region. Specifically, we unpack the influences of industrial history and culture, built up over several centuries, on contemporary regional development dynamics and issues. In doing so, we draw on an evolutionary perspective within economic geography and perspectives from deindustrialization studies to understand how the past shapes the present. We combine these with theories of agency to understand how key actors comprehend the industrial heritage of a place, and how this is incorporated into contemporary regional development efforts. We explore this combination of conceptual lenses through an in-depth case study of Karlskoga, in Sweden, one of the country’s ‘bruksorter’ (mill towns) that grew up around the production of iron and steel, leading to it eventually becoming one of the largest arms manufacturing cities in Europe, home of the well-known Bofors company. However, all has not been plain sailing, and Karlskoga has experienced the challenges of de-population, industrial restructuring, and shocks to the sector upon which the town is reliant. By analysing these mixed fortunes we develop new insights into how regional development is intertwined with structural, institutional, and cultural industrial legacies.

Cereal Silo-pits, Agro-pastoral Practices and Social Organisation in 19th Century Algeria

Cereal Silo-pits, Agro-pastoral Practices and Social Organisation in 19th Century Algeria

ЯНИС СРЕЩУ МИНОТАВЪРА: ЛЕГЕНДАТА ПРОДЪЛЖАВА (РАЗМИСЛИ ПО ПОВОД НОВАТА КНИГА НА ЯНИС ВАРУФАКИС)

A new book by Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism - What Killed Capitalism, has recently been published. Do you remember Varoufakis? In early 2015, at the height of the Greek debt crisis, the little-known (at the time) university lecturer was appointed finance minister and quickly became a star. He was certainly not the first to oppose the so-called Washington Consensus and neoliberalism in economics, but he was perhaps the most eloquent and the most extreme in his criticism, backed by a deep knowledge of the workings of the modern market economy. His time in power was less than half a year, but he will certainly be remembered for a long time. After him, Greece now has its sixth finance minister, but I am sure that even there few people know their names. I allowed myself this extravagant title as I am still under the strong impression of one of his previous books, The Global Minotaur, in which Varoufakis examines economic history and crises, focusing on the role of the US in the post-World War II global economy. The author uses the myth of the Minotaur as a metaphor to explain the complex system of global financial flows that fuelled the US economy and contributed to the accumulation of global economic imbalances that ultimately led to the global financial crisis of 2007-2009.

The Shortest History of Economics by AndrewLeigh (Black Inc., Collingwood, Vic., 2024), pp. vi+228

The Shortest History of Economics by AndrewLeigh (Black Inc., Collingwood, Vic., 2024), pp. vi+228

Market integration, empire and industry in the colonial economic development of the Buenos Aires meat industry (1770s–1800s)

ABSTRACT Building on recent literature on the history of political economy and Spanish imperial history, the article reconstructs the ideas that supported the colonial development of the meat industry in the Río de la Plata. Archival and printed sources are employed to illustrate the different arguments revolving around colonial economic development and imperial rule, in the words and practices of merchants, explorers, administrators and ministers. This way, it is possible to disclose the multiple imperial visions circulating in the Spanish Atlantic. The analysis suggests that economic reformism was not only a European intellectual and political movement but was shared and appropriated by Spanish Americans. They employed arguments in political economy to foster their agenda, namely the economic improvement of their territory in the broader context of the Spanish commercial empire. If a shared consensus around imperial political economy between Spanish and Spanish American vassals provided arguments supporting this colonial industry, the diverging economic interests, imperial rivalries, and the different geographical spaces of enunciation determined a variable dialectic between projects for the expansion of salted meat production and their realisation.

An overview of the history, role, and struggles of agricultural economics and business programs at 1890 Land‐Grant Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU)

AbstractBlacks have been systematically under‐represented in the Agricultural Economics profession, representing only 7% of agricultural economists in academia and between 5% and 10% in the private and public sectors, respectively. Although different policies and funding strategies have been implemented to increase the representation of minorities in the profession, these numbers have not shown significant improvements over time. This paper provides an overview of the history, role, and struggles of 1890 Land‐Grant Historically Black Colleges and Universities in general, and in particular, their agricultural economics and business (AEB) Programs. Recommendations and thoughts on how to increase diversity in AEB programs are also discussed.

Afterlives of Ottoman Orphans in Germany during World War I: Microhistorical and Biographical Approaches to Technology, Expertise, and Labor in Turkey

ABSTRACT: This article applies a (micro)biographical approach to the life stories of two Ottoman orphans sent to Germany to receive vocational training during World War I, Ali and İsmail Dağlı. Coupling family archives, oral and visual sources with state documentation, I elaborate on the post-Ottoman afterlives of German know-how, education, and capital in the social and economic history of Turkey. Biographies of Dağlı brothers show that the successors of both empires restored former channels of circulation of expertise, technology, and labor. Especially seen in the context of Jewish emigration, the life and work history of the brothers elucidate the positive reception of their German education, the importance of their position as “cultural intermediaries,” and the extent of Turkish-German business entanglements.

THE HISTORY OF ECONOMICS SOCIETY AT FIFTY: WHAT KIND OF DIVERSITY?

My first acquaintance with the History of Economics Society (HES) occurred in the summer of 1990 when I attended its seventeenth annual meeting. Organized by the then HES president and now recently deceased Stanley “Todd” Lowry at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, it marked the beginning of my experience with US higher education. Later that summer, I began a two-year post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard University. The economics department still hosted a history of economics seminar—the Kress seminar—though its actual connection with the seminar was tenuous.1 Following the Lexington meeting, the paper I presented was accepted for publication in volume 7 of Perspectives on the History of Economic Thought—a book series that published selected papers from the HES conference. It was my first publication in English. From then on, I kept attending the HES annual meeting regularly and with enthusiasm. I met a number of stimulating people and made some good friends there. It was always refreshing to find myself in the United States following nine months of teaching and research in France.

‘It Is Said That at Least 300,000 rt of Capital are Required for a Raft Trade’

Although the Dutch timber trade from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century has been the subject of many historical studies, the development of the capital-intensive timber wholesale trade has remained rather underexposed by economic historians with regard to the actors involved. This is surprising since a capital of up to 600,000 Reichstaler had to be raised for the Dutch timber trade; amounts that were hardly invested in any other commercial enterprise in Germany at the time. The article therefore focuses on the timber wholesalers of the eighteenth century and analyzes in detail, based on our own archival research and previous research results, how the timber wholesalers organized their business (business strategies, business practices, etc.) and what significance their income had for the economic development of the participating economic regions of West and South-West Germany in the long term. It appears that around 1750 the German timber wholesaler and the timber companies from the Black Forest had long since driven out their Dutch competitors and acquired large fortunes. With the Dutch timber trade, capitalist practices (creation and management of companies, accounting, new methods of credit financing, etc.) also spread, which also formed an important building block for the further development of the South-West and West German economy. However, the most important thing was undoubtedly the emergence of a risk-loving entrepreneurial class with a sufficient capital base and business knowledge, which had long since broken away from 'artisan' self-reliance. Because the timber wholesalers often also invested their capital acquired in the Dutch timber trade in other industries, and these often formed a crystallization point for the West and South-West German industrialization after 1815, it can be said that the timber trade with the Netherlands not only generated an enormous volume in the eighteenth century and supported West German economic growth from 1740 onwards, but in the long term also contributed to the economic and social structural changes of the nineteenth century.

The interactive effect between economic uncertainty and life history strategy on corrupt intentions: a life history theory approach.

Why do some people show more corruption when facing uncertain environment? The present study aimed to give a plausible answer from an evolutionary perspective: this might be rooted in people's different life history strategies (slow vs. fast). The present study measured the participants' corrupt intentions by a hypothetical scenario and primed the feeling of economic environmental uncertainty by requiring the participants to read economic uncertainty (vs. neutral) materials. It is revealed that the participants with fast life history strategies had stronger corrupt intentions after reading materials about economic uncertainty than reading neutral materials. In addition, the desire for power mediated the interactive effect between life history strategy and economic uncertainty on corrupt intentions for fast life history strategists. This finding was discussed for its theoretical and practical implications from the perspective of life history theory.

African time travellers: What can we learn from 500 years of written accounts?

AbstractIn this paper we study 500 years of African economic history using traveller accounts. We systematically collected 2464 unique documents, of which 855 pass language and rigorous data quality requirements. Our final corpus of texts contains more than 230 000 pages. Analysing such a corpus is an insurmountable task for traditional historians and would probably take a lifetime's work. Applying modern day computational linguistic techniques such as a structural topic model approach (STM) in combination with domain knowledge of African economic history, we analyse how first‐hand accounts (topics) evolve across space and time. Apart from obvious accounts of climate, geography, and zoology, we find topics around imperialism, diplomacy, conflict, trade/commerce, health/medicine, evangelization, and many more topics of interest to scholarship. We illustrate how this novel database and text analysis can be employed in three applications (1) What views are introduced by travellers as a result of their occupational background? (2) Did the adoption of quinine as treatment and prophylaxis against malaria facilitate European expansion into Africa? (3) When and how did the diffusion of New World crops alter the African economic landscape?

Multidimensional composite indicators of well‐being: Applications in economic history

AbstractEconomists and social scientists have widely contributed to the so‐called “Beyond GDP” debate—the view that current measures of economic growth are inadequate to measure well‐being and multidimensional indicators. While economic history has not been prominent in these debates, multidimensional indicators have captured the interest of economic historians, with both theoretical and empirical contributions. In this contribution, we examine the areas of consensus and debate in economic history. A comprehensive literature review shows a lack of consensus on how to use multidimensional indicators and that they face substantial critiques. We use two case‐studies (a long‐term series for the Netherlands and one on the basis of the CLIO‐INFRA panel dataset) to illustrate how common findings emerge in the literature and empirical exercises despite methodological differences. We argue that debates on the relation between economic growth and well‐being in the long‐run using these indicators can not only contribute to many founding questions in economic history—though greater precision and transparency in our assumptions about well‐being measurement are necessary—but also to better understand present‐day challenges such as how to better pursue growth in well‐being and not merely in GDP.

Nominal wage patterns, monopsony, and labour market power in early modern England

AbstractRecords of long‐eighteenth‐century English wage rates exhibit almost absolute nominal rigidity over many decades, alongside significant dispersion between the wages paid by different organizations for the same type of work in the same location. These features of preindustrial wages have been obscured by data aggregation and the construction of real wage series, which introduce variation. In this paper, we argue that the standard explanations for wage rigidity in economic history are insufficient. We show econometric evidence for monopsony power in one major organization and argue that the main historical wage series are also affected by employer power. Eighteenth‐century England had an imperfectly competitive labour market with large frictions. This gave large organizations the power to set wage policies. We discuss the implications for the eighteenth‐century British economy and research into long‐run wages more generally.

To their Credit: The Aristocracy and Commercial Credit in Europe, c.1750–1820

The aristocracy and their use of commercial credit are seldom explored in the European comparative context despite important studies of the French aristocracy and their credit relations with shopkeepers, tradesmen and fashion merchants. This article studies the aristocracy and commercial credit in England, Germany and Sweden, by drawing on the normative literature and the account books, receipted bills, correspondence and diaries of several families occupying different echelons of the nobility. We examine the extent and nature of aristocratic engagement with shop credit, the ways in which they manipulated and managed this credit, and their motivations for doing so. We argue that the aristocracy was involved in a modern commercial credit economy and that this was central to their position in society and way of life. Our analysis of the ideals communicated through conduct books and parental advice and the actual credit practices of the aristocracy show that they took their credit arrangements seriously. They had to abide by the rules of commercial credit and settle their accounts: sometimes promptly, most often in a timely manner and only occasionally after considerable delay. The article offers a comparative framework for further and broader studies on the aristocracy within economic history.

What Is This “Tranquility”? A Reply to Nelson

Abstract In a note appearing in the August 2024 issue of History of Political Economy (HOPE), Edward Nelson argues that a passage commenting on James Forder's Macroeconomics and the Phillips Curve Myth (2014) in a 2023 HOPE article by Carlo Cristiano titled “The Early Reception of the Phillips Curve in the United Kingdom” would provide a false characterization of the economic literature and claims priority in affirming that UK policymakers did not use the Phillips curve as a menu for policy. It is shown in this reply that Nelson's reading of Cristiano's 2023 article, and more specifically of the passage commenting on Forder's 2014 book, is based on a misunderstanding. The purpose of the 2023 article was not to show that UK policymakers did not use the Phillips trade-off as a menu for policy. In that article, consensus on this point is taken for granted. It is also argued in this reply that there is no need to mention Nelson's works to affirm that UK policymakers did not use the Phillips trade-off as a policy menu and that Nelson's works are indeed very relevant, but for other reasons.

Technical and economic history of western Han dynasty revealed by bronze mirrors from Zonglvcheng cemetery, Linzi, China

Technical and economic history of western Han dynasty revealed by bronze mirrors from Zonglvcheng cemetery, Linzi, China

Determining the Normal Degree of Capacity Utilisation: Insights from the History of Economic Thought

ABSTRACT Several issues related to the normal degree of capacity utilisation have become crucial in the recent debate within demand-led growth theories. By going back over the history of economic thought, the paper aims to highlight the main findings that may nourish the current debate. Our reconstruction identifies the main factors affecting the firm's choice as to the size and degree of utilisation of productive capacity and draws attention to three points that appear to require particular attention in the debate on demand-led growth: firstly, the degree of utilisation corresponding to the maximum profit does not necessarily correspond to the minimum unit cost associated with the plant; secondly, the size of productive capacity depends on the variability of the output produced by the firm; finally, and in connection with the two previous points, the determination of normal utilisation requires defining the market structure in which the firm is supposed to operate and is therefore affected by the notion of competition adopted.

The size of the offshore sector in the Norwegian economy

ABSTRACT Writers on Norwegian economic history often claim that industries related to the sea played a major role in the Norwegian economy for centuries. However, little has been done to quantify this sector’s contribution to the economy. The present paper seeks to quantify the size of the key offshore industries compared to GDP and exports. To do so it has been necessary to draw on new historical national account calculations and export data in addition to compute new series Based on these calculations we find that the offshore sector made up a significant part of Norwegian GDP, and a dominant part of exports, 1816–2021. As a share of the total economy the sector’s traditional industries, i.e. fishing ari and ocean transport were in sum stable until the late 1950s in the long-run. Thereafter they shrunk rapidly, when the takeoff of the new offshore industry, oil and gas extraction from the continental shelf from the 1970s, made the offshore economy reach new heights in the decades to follow. This paper quantifies this development.

Linking and Delinking Aspects of Economic Growth and Employment in the Indian Economy: Granger Causality Approach

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of various economic growth and employment approaches that have been popular throughout economic history, with a focus on linking and delinking aspects of GDP and employment in the Indian economy. The semi-log quadratic model was used for the trends of GDP and employment across the selected countries. For the determination of the linkages between the variables, the Granger causality test promulgated by Engel and Granger (1987), and the maximum likelihood-based technique of Johansen and Julius (1990) and Johansen (1992) were used in the study. The results found that employment and GDP are two different aspects of an economy not only in the Indian economy but across the majority of the world economies. The results of model specification proved the presence of both long-run and short-run relationships between GDP and employment by the Johansen co-integration test in the Indian economy over the period. It has been found that the increase in GDP is negatively influencing the employment level by the VECM model as a 1 per cent increase in GDP results in 0.28 per cent of job losses in the Indian economy. This study aims to provide an overview of several approaches to economic growth and employment that have been popular throughout economic history up to the present, with an emphasis on linking and delinking aspects of economic growth and employment. In the context of an economy, economic growth and employment are two distinct aspects that should be tackled with separate economic strategies.

The farce of the commons? Corporate rights, political wrongs and common-pool resources in English towns, 1835–1870

ABSTRACT The 1832 Reform Act and the 1835 Municipal Corporations Act reconfigured political representation in English towns from a ‘franchise’ system (based on rights of corporate freedom) to a property-based ratepaying electorate. This shift also undermined the rights of freemen to urban common lands and resources, which were linked to pre-existing forms of representation. This issue links directly to debates in economic history about use-rights and the preservation of common-pool resources (CPRs). Supporters of Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom argue that such common resources could be preserved because this was the most rational economic choice facing their users. Critics have asserted that the fate of such economic resources was dictated by the historically contingent social, economic and political forces within them, not abstract economic rationality. This article assesses these arguments through a micro-study of the commons in the Yorkshire borough of Beverley between 1835 and 1870. New legislation ensured that these lands were managed in line with Ostrom’s principles of transparency and accountability. Despite this, they became entangled in wholesale, organised political corruption, exposed by a detailed Parliamentary enquiry in 1868. The article investigates this contradiction to explore how far ‘institutions’ could remain autonomous within a highly contested political ‘space’.