EH4A1      One Unit
Historical Analysis of Economic Change

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

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This course provides an overview of the central theoretical questions and current research topics in economic history, and examines the ways in which economic historians collect, analyse and interpret evidence. After an introduction to the history of the field and what makes it distinct in the first week, the next three weeks will consider the ways economic historians measure and document economic change over the long run. Each of the following six weeks will introduce a current topic or debate in economic history research, presented by the department’s experts in that field. Topics to be covered this year include political economy and culture, demography and labour, geography, historical trends in inequality and debates about the changing scales of inquiry, and finally the role that women have played in economic history. Each lecture will pair conceptual and theoretical reviews with case studies illustrating applied research. 

20 hours of lectures and 20 hours of seminars in the Autumn Term.

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

Lectures:

Each lecture will review major themes and questions in each topic before concluding with a discussion of that week’s case study.

Seminar:

Each seminar will last 2 hours and will cover the themes of that week's lecture. 

Students are expected to write two essays or equivalent pieces of written work during the term.

Hatton, Timothy J, O’Rourke, Kevin H. and Taylor, Alan. “Introduction: the new comparative economic history”, in The new comparative economic history: essays in honor of Jeffrey G Williamson (MIT Press, 2007).

Lamoreaux, Naomi. “The future of economic history must be interdisciplinary”. Journal of Economic History 25, 4 (2015), pp. 1251-1257.

Bolt, Jutt and Jan Luiten van Zanden. “Maddison-style estimates of the evolution of the world economy: a new 2023 update”. Journal of Economic Surveys (2024)

Gallardo-Albarran, Daniel. “Missed opportunities? Human welfare in Western Europe and the United States, 1913-1950,” Explorations in Economic History 72 (2019): 57-73.

Steckel, Richard. “Stature and the standard of living”. Journal of Economic Literature 33 (1995), pp. 1903-40.

Boyer, George R., ‘Malthus was right after all: Poor relief and birth rates in southeastern England’, Journal of Political Economy, 97, no. 1 (1989), pp. 93-114.

Ogilvie, Sheilagh. “‘Whatever is, is right?’ Economic institutions in pre-industrial Europe”. Economic History Review 60, 4 (2007), pp. 649-684.

Greif, Avner. ‘Reputations and coalitions in medieval trade: evidence on the Maghribi traders’. Journal of Economic History 49, 4 (1989), pp. 857-882.

Hoffman, Philip. “What do states do? Politics and economic history”. Journal of Economic History 75, 2 (2015), 303-332.

Van Zanden, Jan Luiten and Prak, Maarten. “Towards an economic interpretation of citizenship: the Dutch Republic between medieval communes and modern nation-states”. European Review of Economic History 10 (2006), pp. 111-145.

Becker, Sascha O., Steven Pfaff and Jared Rubin, “Causes and Consequences of the Protestant Reformation,” Explorations in Economic History, 62 (2016): 1-25.

Cantoni, Davide, Jeremiah Dittmar and Noam Yuchtman, “Religious Competition and Reallocation: The Political Economy of Secularlization in the Protestant Reformation,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics (2018), 2037–2096

Alfani, Guido. 2021. "Economic Inequality in Preindustrial Times: Europe and Beyond." Journal of Economic Literature, 59 (1): 3-44.

Milanovic, Branko, Peter H. Lindert, and Jeffrey G. Williamson. "Pre‐industrial inequality." The economic journal 121.551 (2011): 255-272.

Exam (100%), duration: 180 Minutes in the Spring exam period