Suspended in 2025/26
EH432 Half Unit
Economic History and Geography: Advanced Topics and Methods
This information is for the 2025/26 session.
Course Convenor
Prof Juan Roses Vendoiro
Availability
This course is available on the MSc in Economic History, MSc in Economic History (Research), MSc in Financial History, MSc in Global Economic History and MSc in Political Economy of Late Development. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. This course uses controlled access as part of the course selection process.
How to apply: All Economic History courses are controlled access and capped. Priority will be given to students for whom the course is within their programme regulations.
All course choices submitted before the deadline will be considered. It is advisable that students submit a statement in support of their course choices as these will be used to allocate places where a course is oversubscribed.
Deadline for application: First round offers will be sent on Monday 29 September 2025. Students who submit their course choices after the deadline and students wishing to take an Economic History course as an outside option will be waitlisted initially and informed by Wednesday 1 October 2025 whether they have been successful.
Once an offer has been sent, you have 48 hours to accept it before it times out. Once an offer has timed out, it will be re-allocated to someone on the waitlist. In all cases, it is strongly advised that you have an alternative course choice as a back-up in case you are unable to secure your first choice.
For queries contact: If you have any questions, please contact the MSc Programmes Officer (o.harrison1@lse.ac.uk) A list of all taught master's courses in this Department are listed on LSE's course guide webpages. Guidance on how to apply to individual controlled access courses can also be found on LSE for You.
Requisites
Additional requisites:
Students should have completed courses in intermediate level econometrics.
Knowledge of spatial econometric packages like GIS is not necessary. The course will not provide a comprehensive training in econometric methods or computer applications.
Course content
The course aims to introduce the student to topics at the frontier of Historical Economic Geography research of importance both at a theoretical and empirical level. Historical Economic Geography explores how and why the location of economic activities changes across time and space. To do so, it combines methodologies from several social sciences including Economic History, Economic Geography, Human Geography, Economics and Econometrics.
The focus is on acquiring the necessary skills to engage in advanced analysis of historical economic geography evidence and understand how History and Geography can shape economic development. The course consists of nine two-hours seminars on specialised topics in historical economic geography and one preparatory research workshop. This course contents change from year to year following the recent developments in the discipline.
The topics considered in this edition of the course are the following. 1) general problems of research with historical and spatial data; 2) the construction of historical-spatial data; 3) historical analysis of market integration: time-series and dynamic panels; 4) historical analysis of the spatial concentration of economic activities: measurement and determinants; 5) historical and spatial analysis of factor markets; 6) historical analysis of the local labour markets; 7) natural experiments in Historical Economic Geography: policies and shocks; 8) the evolution and measurement of regional inequality; 9) historical analysis of the urban space.
Teaching
20 hours of computer workshops in the Winter Term.
Formative assessment
Students will produce several short reviews of research papers and participate in the research workshop with an original project. The reviews' objective is to familiarize the students with the different methodologies and prepare them for their research projects. The research workshop will help them design the project and discuss its methodology. All formative coursework will receive written or oral feedback.
Indicative reading
- Ahlfeldt, G. M., Redding, S. J., Sturm, D. M., and Wolf, N. 2015. “The economics of density: Evidence from the Berlin Wall,” Econometrica, vol. 83(6), 2127-2189.
- Bertazzini, M. 2022. “The Long-term Impact of Italian Road Construction in the Horn of Africa, 1920-2000,” Journal of Economic Geography, vol. 22(1), pp. 181-214.
- Rosés, J. R., & Wolf, N. 2021. “Regional growth and inequality in the long-run: Europe, 1900–2015,” Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 37(1), 17-48.
- Gibbons, S., H.G Overman and E. Patacchini 2015. “Spatial Methods,” in Duranton, G, J.V. Henderson and W. Strange (eds) Handbook of Urban and Regional Economics, Vol 5a, Chapter 3, Elsevier
- Baum-Snow, N. and F. Ferreira 2015. “Causal Inference in Urban Economics,” in Duranton, G, J.V. Henderson and W. Strange (eds) Handbook of Urban and Regional Economics, Vol 5a, Chapter 1, Elsevier.
- Gibbons, S., and Overman, H. G. (2012). “Mostly pointless spatial econometrics?,” Journal of regional Science, vol. 52(2), 172-191.
- Corrado, L., and Fingleton, B. 2012.. “Where is the economics in spatial econometrics?” Journal of Regional Science, vol. 52(2), 210-239.
- Kelly, M. (2019). “The standard errors of persistence,” mimeo UCL.
Assessment
Project (100%, 5000 words)
Key facts
Department: Economic History
Course Study Period: Winter Term
Unit value: Half unit
FHEQ Level: Level 7
CEFR Level: Null
Total students 2024/25: Unavailable
Average class size 2024/25: Unavailable
Controlled access 2024/25: NoCourse selection videos
Some departments have produced short videos to introduce their courses. Please refer to the course selection videos index page for further information.
Personal development skills
- Leadership
- Self-management
- Team working
- Problem solving
- Application of information skills
- Communication
- Application of numeracy skills