In the past academic year, I had the priviledge to work at the LSE US Centre as an undergraduate research assistant with Dr James Morrison in researching ‘Passing the economic torch from the UK to the USA in the 20th century’. The project aims to build upon the collapse of the gold standard and the ensuing economic instability through the lens of Keynes’ writings. There is significant focus on Keynes’ exchange with prominent individuals of the time, such as Walter Case, A.C. Pigou, and Harry Dexter White. There is great emphasis on the prominent shapers of the Anglo-American 20th century post-Bretton Woods world order, whose positions are brilliantly elaborated upon in Dr Morrison’s book ‘England’s Cross of Gold’.
Role in Research
My role was to work with archival material from J.M. Keynes and organise this material using key aspects, such as the chronology of his writings, recurrent themes, and titles of his pieces. Topics ranged from Keynes’ proposal for an international gold note issue, his general theory, critique of the New Deal, and Britain’s war debt to the USA. My main task was to impose structure upon the text, containing Keynes’ writings, in the digital database by adding in page numbers, document names, document dates, and organising the editorial notes. This was an invaluable step that accelerates the research process by making it easier for researchers to search for key words, dates, or certain documents. I also took some notes on notable insights within Keynes’ writings and in Dr Morrison’s book that provides a different lens into England’s departure from gold through positions of the main actors. I also had the great opportunity to read Douglass C. North’s works on institutions and take notes on different perspectives on ‘‘institutions’’ as well as ideas of thinkers, such as Locke, Tocqueville, and Acemoglu’s divergent conceptualisations of political institutions and administration systems.
Description of Methods
My research revolved around Keynes’ exchanges and writings throughout his life including his role in constructing the post-world war economic system. I analysed Keynes’ essays, speeches, letters, and publications from volumes of the collected writings of J. M. Keynes. Initially, his works were organised in broad themes in a pdf but I converted into text documents with date tags, titles, and page numbers, organising the editorial and footnotes, and making appropriate corrections. This was performed by separating different documents using pieces of ‘code’, creating labels for each document with key identifiers, working out the relevance of each editorial note for the distinct documents, and skimming the writings for any major errors to be fixed. Therefore, researchers can use the database to look up parts of Keynes’ writings by relevant dates, key words, subtopics, or correspondents of interest, facilitating researchers to efficiently sort out the relevant information and easily discover new details and relationships with notable contributions to the literature. Performing literature review on institutions, I worked with Douglass C. North’s writings on transaction costs, institutions, and mental models which are important in leading to economic development. I shortlisted the works that involved institutions and then took notes specifically on definitions of economic and political institutions, unpacking his references of key thinkers. Building on this, I also utilised web search to identify academic papers that could provide different perspectives on role of institutions through formation of mental habits or incentive mechanisms.
Outcome and Wider Relevance
I spent a major part of project reading Keynes’ works, which I found challenging to tackle but hugely rewarding once understood. He is a profound economist and thinker both due to his revolutionary ideas and contributions to economics, and his engagement with events of his time; currency stabilisation, the World Economic Conference, the New Deal, and rearmament. It was of great significance to ensure order through labelling of correct dates and ensuring accuracy in the text files, which were transferred from shuffled documents arranged according to editorial preferences. I also had to be very careful to not miss any relevant editorial notes or additive details when separating documents because afterwards, it is difficult to recover the information, which might reveal a hidden detail about Keynes’ ideas and the economic order’s evolution. I duplicated the editorial notes across relevant documents, marking relationships between them whether this be letter exchangesor a series of publications on the same topic. As such, it allows researchers to trace Keynes’ ideas and reconstruct the evolution of Keynes’ thoughts and role in economic negotiations to an extent that was not possible before.
The research work was not only personally engrossing but incredibly useful for Dr Morrisons work: he utilises the structuring that researchers like myself do to pull out Keynes’ original words from a particular moment in a momentous event like Bretton Woods and make timely contributions to discussions in conferences. Furthermore, it has value for constructing the narrative around a part of Keynes’ life and work using the right chronology, key moments, and quotations for any relevant publication.
Reflections
Overall, I found the project very impactful and learned a lot from Dr Morrison on different ways of analysing the economic order of 20th century, marked predominantly by the departure from the gold standard. I discovered the importance of precision in archival research, since a single detail can be invaluable for one’s work as well as the power of key stakeholders on shaping the economic world order. Furthermore, my understanding of institutions broadened from formal rules to include shared norms and incentives, illustrating the ultimate importance of political institutions and rights for driving gains from trade and prosperity. The pinnacle of my research experience has been my conversations with Dr Morrison on Keynes’ complex ideology, turn of events in 1920s and 1930s, and the scope of ‘institutions’ from a political, economic, and social standpoint. I am grateful for the US Centre for the opportunity for the research experience and Dr Morrison for introducing me to literature on Political Economy and International World Order and doing his utmost to support me throughout the process.