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Graduate Economic History Seminars 2024-25

Spring Term 2024-25

Time: Wednesdays 1-3pm
Venue: KSW.G.01

7 May

  • Tom Learmouth (LSE)
  • British Manufacturing Heritage & Indigenous Industries: Knowledge Transfer in a Japanese Rubber Cluster, 1918-1937

    Abstract:
    This paper seeks to improve our understanding of the mechanisms behind catch-up industrialisation and the evolution of firms within industrial clusters. It analyses how Western knowledge was transferred to industrialising Japan in the new industry of rubber manufacturing, focusing on the key cluster of Kobe in the inter-war period. Japan’s nascent rubber industry was transformed when British trading company H. & W. Greer established factories in Kobe for British manufacturers J. G. Ingram (in 1908) and Dunlop (in 1909). In the 1920s, early Ingram and Dunlop spin-offs specialising in rickshaw & bicycle tyres acted as the pivot of a new, rapidly growing rubber footwear industry which also included hundreds of household producers previously connected to Kobe’s match industry. Kobe rubber footwear flooded global export markets in 1930s. However, local Kobe producers failed to challenge Dunlop Far East in the more technologically challenging segment of motor tyres. By newly demonstrating the continued importance of British manufacturing heritage in the evolution of this cluster, this paper builds on recent research in Japanese by Mizuno (2022) analysing the shift from match production to rubber production in inter-war Kobe. The evolution of the small-business Kobe cluster is also contrasted with the rival big-business rubber footwear cluster in Kurume which gave birth to Bridgestone in this period. The contribution to the literature is both empirical and theoretical. In marshalling a rich and diverse body of new material in Japanese and English, both qualitative and statistical, the methodology employed is a bottom-up analytical narrative based on discovery. This paper also maps hundreds of Kobe rubber factories through geo-referencing to reveal heavy clustering around the old Ingram factory on the western edge of the city. A novel conceptual framework is used by bringing together two diverse theoretical perspectives, one from the Japanese historiography, the other from evolutionary economics. Nakamura and Abe’s suggestion that the ‘indigenous industrialization process’ in Japan identified by Tanimoto was not separate from, but interacted with, the diffusion of Western-style manufacturing is integrated into Steven Klepper’s heritage theory suggesting that knowledge diffusion out of leading firms drives industry clustering.

14 May

  • Dong Zhao (Oxford)
  • Institutional Shocks, Elite Backgrounds, and Dynastic Fiscal Balance in Imperial China (221 BCE–1912 CE): A Long-Run Political Economy Analysis

    Abstract:
    This paper examines how institutional shocks influenced elite selection in imperial China and how elite composition, in turn, shaped fiscal performance. Using an original dataset of 2,895 prime ministers across 55 dynasties (221 BCE–1912 CE), I classify their socio-political backgrounds into four categories: imperial family, affinal (relatives by marriage), aristocratic or high-official lineages, and commoners who rose through examinations or achievement. On average, 15% were princes, 14% affinal elites, 37% nobles, and 34% merit-based commoners. A long-run difference-in-differences strategy shows that external shocks—such as the Upheaval of the Five Barbarians and the Mongol conquest—curtailed meritocratic appointments, while civil service reforms and internal rebellions promoted them. Over time, dynasties gravitated toward a hybrid model combining personal autocracy with professional bureaucracy—until the late Qing, when external threats prompted emperors to recentralize authority within the imperial clan. As a result, seven of thirteen cabinet members in 1901 were Manchu princes. A second dataset of over 3,500 Qing central ministries and provincial governors (1644–1911) confirms that emperors relied on kin during crises but reverted to commoners when kin-based governance failed. Finally, using fiscal performance data (Wei et al. 2015), I show that merit-based elites are consistently associated with stronger fiscal outcomes—underscoring the enduring tension between loyalty and competence in imperial state-building

21 May

  • Nick Fitzhenry (LSE)
  • District-Level Mortality Convergence in Apartheid South Africa: Long-Term Trends and Contextual Determinants

    Abstract:
    This study investigates spatial and racial mortality inequalities in South Africa during apartheid, focusing on the period 1940–1970. While national-level disparities are well-documented, the evolution of mortality across smaller geographic units remains underexplored. Utilising newly constructed district-level crude mortality rates (CMRs) for the White, Indian, and Coloured populations—groups for which vital registration data are complete—this research examines intra-group spatial convergence in mortality. Findings indicate a significant reduction in within-group spatial mortality disparities, particularly among the Coloured population. Notably, beta and sigma convergence analyses reveal that the 1950s—the advent of apartheid—marked the most pronounced period of district-level 'levelling up.' Multinomial regression models identify higher physician density and rural district characteristics as key correlates of mortality gains during this decade. However, spatial factors at the district level had limited explanatory power regarding the nation's overall racial mortality gap for these groups: it was not merely the case that a larger share of these non-white populations resided in ‘high-mortality’ districts. Decomposition analysis reveals that the district-level spatial distribution of these racial groups accounted for a maximum of 15% of the national racial mortality gap, with this influence diminishing over time. These results suggest that while intra-group spatial inequalities decreased, substantial inter-group disparities persisted nationally due to enduring inequalities within districts, consistent with the highly segregated residential, economic, and healthcare environments within rural and urban localities during apartheid.

28 May

  • John W.Z. Zhang (LSE)
  • Austerity and Social Unrest

    Abstract:
    This paper investigates the relationship between austerity and social unrest, which tackles the following research question: Did the retrenchment of social welfare and policing capacity since the defeat of Napoleon cause the Swing riots of 1830–1 – one of the largest episodes of social unrest ever observed in England? By applying generative artificial intelligence (AI) to the corpus of contemporaneous newspaper transcriptions, this paper constructs a novel Swing riots database that tracks daily rioting incidents, suppression activities and economic concessions at the parish level. Part one of this paper leverages a shift-share instrumental variables framework and a border discontinuity design to estimate the respective causal effects of poor relief and yeomanry cavalry cutbacks on social unrest. Part two of this paper builds and estimates a novel dynamic discrete choice model that endogenises both coordination and pacification dynamics of social unrest and conducts counterfactual experiments using pre-cutback policing capacity and welfare provision to simulate spatio-temporal rioting choices that infer the significance of welfare retrenchment in undermining social stability.

4 June

  • Sheila Pugh (LSE)
  • Regulation of water companies in nineteenth century Britain: did it cut much ice?

    Abstract:It would be inconceivable in the 21st century that a water company could be unregulated. A water company’s natural monopoly would be expected to warrant limits on prices or profits and to reach minimum standards for quality. Yet the literature suggests that regulation of nineteenth British water companies was half-hearted and ineffective and that this failure helped drive municipalisation. However, there has been no systematic research on water regulation and this paper aims to help fill the gap. Using a new data set of maximum prices for domestic consumers set in all water companies’ Local Acts and case studies of Midland water companies, the paper argues that contrary to the prevailing view of historians, regulation was far from being ineffective. The paper presents evidence that, from the 1840’s, the maximum allowable price had some ‘bite’ and that maximum prices were not set at monopoly levels. However, the research suggests that legislation could have unintended consequences and prices for the poorest households rose over time to cluster around the maximum set in the 1848 Public Health Act. The case studies suggest that the key to effective regulation lay in the relationship between a local government and its local water company. If incentives were aligned, then the water company could cooperate with the town council and further the interests of water consumers. The findings from Nottingham show that this happened for many years. However, the preferences of Nottingham town council and water company began to diverge in the 1870’s and, compounded by lack of information, regulation was abandoned in favour of municipalisation in 1880. The findings of the research contribute to a better understanding of nineteenth century regulation of water companies and suggest that, counter to the dominant historical narrative, a water company’s behaviour could be altered to comply with government demands.

11 June

  • Alessandro Brioschi (Queen's University Belfast)
  • Networks paving the way: apprenticeship and occupational mobility in early modern Genoa

    Abstract:
    The functioning of pre-industrial labour markets remains an area of ongoing scholarly debate. Using a dataset of 8,000 apprenticeship contracts drafted in Genoa between 1450 and 1530, this paper examines how social networks shaped labour market outcomes and provides three main insights. First, social networks, particularly the presence of family ties with masters and guild members, structured the entry of apprentices into skilled occupations and significantly increased their chances of becoming masters after training. Second, individuals with family ties to guild members benefited from favourable conditions throughout their professional careers, ultimately improving their labour market outcomes and restricting access to opportunities for those without such connections. Third, the segmentation of the urban labour market confirms that apprenticeship was only a limited source of opportunities for upward occupational mobility in Italian labour markets.

18 June

  • Nick Peyton(LSE)
  • Gaining Ground: How Monastic Land Buyers Secured Generational Wealth in Devon

    Abstract:
    This paper examines the effects of a sudden deepening of the land market in a pre-industrial rural environment. Using the Dissolution of the English Monasteries as a sudden supply shock, I examine the effects of just such a deepening on both the families that purchased land and their local economies. Combining a new dataset of tens of thousands of individual tax assessments with a battery of status-loaded sources compiled by genealogists, I find that the purchase of monastic land was associated with substantially higher social and economic status across a range of different outcomes. This status increment remains even accounting for status in each previous period, likely due to the unique stability provided by land or to the underlying competence of the purchasing families themselves. However, the deepening of the land market does not appear to have had much of an effect on the overall structure of the economy. I find nothing but very localized effects of ex-monastic land and no effects at all of the presence of monastic land purchasers themselves, throwing doubt on any direct link between either gentry purchasers of monastic land or the land itself and future economic development. These results suggest that the Dissolution of the Monasteries was more of a reshuffling of the top of the wealth distribution than a structural break in English economic history.