EC465      One Unit
Economic Growth, Development, and Capitalism in Historical Perspective

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

Requisites

Pre-requisites:

Students must have completed EC400 before taking this course.

Additional requisites:

Students should also have completed courses in intermediate level microeconomics, macroeconomics, and econometrics.

In exceptional circumstances, students may take this course without EC400 provided they meet the necessary requirements and have received approval from the course conveners (via a face to face meeting), the MSc Economics Programme Director and their own Programme Director. Contact the Department of Economics for more information (econ.msc@lse.ac.uk) regarding entry to this course.

This course will provide a rigorous introduction to the analysis of long run economic growth and development. The focus is on acquiring the necessary empirical skills to engage in advanced analysis of economic evidence, and to develop an understanding of how historical evidence can shape and inform economic theory. Topics at the forefront of economics and economic history will be covered. These include political economy, technological change, economic growth, education, demography, Malthusian economics, the economics of law and property rights, gender, culture, social mobility, and inequality. The emphasis will be on combining theory and data to evaluate fundamental ideas in economics concerning the determinants of well-being, the origins of growth, and the dynamics of market economies.

11 hours of seminars and 20 hours of lectures in the Winter Term.
20 hours of lectures and 9 hours of seminars in the Autumn Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn and Winter Term.

Students will be expected to produce at least 1 presentation and 1 exercise in the AT and WT. The formative coursework will consist of a combination of student presentations, written exercises, data analysis, and problems.

Most of the reading is from journal articles which appear on reading lists distributed at the start of each part of the course. However, the following references may serve as an introduction to material included in the syllabus: Nunn, "The Importance of History for Economic Development" (2009); Robinson and Acemoglu, "Why Nations Fail" (2012); Acemoglu, "Introduction to Modern Economic Growth" (Princeton, 2009); Hall and Jones, "The New Kaldor Facts: Ideas, Institutions, Population, and Human Capital" (2010); Mokyr, "Lever of Riches" (1988); Piketty (2013) "Capital in the Twenty-First Century"; Diamond (1997) "Guns, Germs and Steel".

Exam (50%), duration: 120 Minutes, reading time: 15 minutes in the Spring exam period

Essay (50%, 6000 words)

The summative assessment consists of an exam that reviews and synthesises all course materials and an essay.  The essay will be a critical analytic essay providing an opportunity for original empirical research.

This course is IRDAP-enabled, meaning that resit and deferred assessments will take place in August 2026.