New ERC Horizon 2020 Starting Grant in Economic History: Spoils of War: The Economic Consequences of the Great War in Central Europe

Tamás Vonyó is an Assistant Professor
 at Bocconi University in Milan

Dr Tamás Vonyó has been awarded €1.49 million to conduct research on a 'Spoils of WAR' project, which aims to set a new standard in the economic history of the world wars by investigating how the First World War affected regional economic development and industrial organisation in the Habsburg Empire and its successor states. We can directly account for the impact of wartime resource allocation, independent from the outcomes of postwar political disintegration, using abundant, yet understudied, primary data on war contractors. We can detect how war spending affected the spatial concentration of industry, the economic structure of Habsburg regions, and business networks. Case studies on key industries can help to demonstrate how they perceived these changes and what strategies they developed to address them. The project will break through traditional boundaries between economic and business history and integrate the analytical tools of both disciplines. It will shift focus in the recent economic history of the wars from the Second to the First World War and use modern methods in historical economic geography and comparative business history.

The Dondena Centre for Research on Social Dynamics and Public Policy at Bocconi University will host the project between 2019 and 2023. The research team will include two post-doctoral researchers in economic history and two junior research fellows in business history. The vacancies for the two post-doctoral researchers are available here and here (deadline 1.December 2018).

CfP: The nutrition transition and beyond: dietary change in the world since 1945

FERNANDO COLLANTES (University of Zaragoza) and ERNST LANGTHALER (Johannes Kepler University Linz) would like to propose a session on dietary change since 1945 for the upcoming Rural History 2019 conference (Paris, 10-13 September). As a preparation, they are happy to issue now this informal call for papers.

 They would like to shape the session around three topics:

 (1)  Major trends in food consumption in the world since 1945. All across the world, diets have been changing rapidly and profoundly in the period from 1945 to the present. In the global North, the postwar decades witnessed the rise of the “Western diet” rich in processed foodstuffs (meat, vegetable oils, sugar etc.) and the culmination of the “classical” period of the nutrition transition, while the last few decades have featured a turn towards differentiated products and qualitative substitutions (“food from nowhere” – “food from somewhere”). In the global South, some traits of a nutrition transition can be detected, but such transition seems to be unfolding in ways that do not necessarily mimic those of the global North at an earlier stage. One major area of interest for us is the measurement, description and identification of these major trends.

(2)  Causes of diet change. Changes in food consumption seem to be partly related to economic factors, such as the evolution of consumer income and food prices. These in turn connect the analysis of diet change to broader issues of economic growth, inequality and food chain dynamics. Yet, few would dispute that these economic variables exert their impact within specific political, social and cultural contexts (patriotic campaigns, social movements, religious norms, etc.), the study of which is essential to our understanding of the causes of diet change. They particularly welcome analyses of the causes of diet change that aim at capturing this interplay of economic, political, social and cultural elements.

 (3)  Consequences of diet change. The most immediate impact of diet change has to do with consumer health. There is now widespread concern about the negative consequences of excessive, unhealthy food consumption styles in the global North, as well as an increasing awareness of the role of food security in human development in the global South. Yet, there are other, indirect consequences of diet change, such as those that impact on the environment or on social cohesion. Diet change since 1945 has probably contributed to intensifying the food system’s impact on the environment, but there are also signs of increasing consumer interest in organic, seasonal and regional foods. In the long run, the nutrition transition probably contributes to the making of a middle-class, mass consumer society, but the more recent turn towards differentiated foods and qualitative substitutions may well have started a new cycle of class-based differentiation.

They welcome paper proposals on these three areas, broadly defined. Interdisciplinary, cross-country analyses will be very well received, but we are also interested in papers that provide in-depth accounts of particular products and countries. Papers that are explicitly framed within theoretical perspectives from the social sciences are encouraged, but other papers will be considered as well.

If you want to join us for this session, please send us a title and a short abstract of about 200 words to our email addresses: collantf@unizar.es and ernst.langthaler@jku.at.

The deadline for this is September 28. Please realize that, in case that our session proposal is accepted, preference will be given to those of you who join us at this early stage.

Mikołaj Malinowski won the Figuerola Prize awarded biennially for the best article published in the European Review of Economic History

Mikołaj Malinowski is a Postdoctoral
Fellow at Lund University

Serfs and the city: market conditions, surplus extraction institutions, and urban growth in early modern Poland 

European Review of Economic History. 2016, 2, volume 20, pp. 123–146.

Abstract of the article: I investigate the relation between institutions, markets, and preindustrial economic growth. In particular, I analyze the impact of coercive agricultural class structures on urban population growth in Poland. My main point is that the impact of the demesne economy based on serfdom on urban growth was neither inherently negative nor positive. Instead, I suggest that the effect of serfdom depended on market conditions. I propose a new mechanism that explains how higher monetary and labor duties charged by landlords to their enserfed tenant farmers could have made urban settlements more resilient to a market crisis. I find empirical support for this idea with use of new database on urban settlements.

Browse the list of previous winners

Thor Berger won the Gino Luzzatto Dissertation Competition for to the best PhD Dissertation on any subject relating to the economic history of Europe, defended during the period July 2015 to June 2017

Thor Berger won the Gino Luzzatto Dissertation Competition for to the best PhD Dissertation on any subject relating to the economic history of Europe, defended during the period July 2015 to June 2017

Thor Berger is a postdoctoral fellow at
Lund University

Engines of Growth: Essays in Swedish Economic History

A central task for economic historians is to explain why some countries forged ahead, while others fell behind, and how some initially backward countries managed to converge with the leading industrializers in the 19th century. While these divergent growth trajectories are typically attributed to country-level differences in terms of, for example, factor prices or institutions, the vast gaps in industrialization and incomes that opened up within nations are hard to reconcile with such explanations. Against that backdrop, my dissertation analyzes regional and urban growth patterns during Sweden’s remarkable economic transformation during the half century leading up to the Great War.

As forcefully argued by Sidney Pollard, it has always been know that an industrial revolution has to be associated with a revolution in transportation. Above all, the railroad epitomized the 19th-century transport revolution to contemporary observers and the uneven spread of the emerging European railroad networks were often expected to be able to “make or break” a region. However, it has remained challenging for economic historians to identify the impact of the railroad since they often connected already rapidly growing places. In two companion chapters, I exploit the rollout of the Swedish state railroad network to identify its contribution to industrialization and short- and long-term impacts on urban growth respectively. Estimates reveal a sharp acceleration in the pace of industrialization in both cities and rural parishes that were “randomly” traversed by a railroad, while the shock of the first railroads shifted the spatial equilibrium of the urban economy that is still visible in the size distribution of cities some 150 years later.

While the railroad’s importance for Swedish economic development was emphasized already a century ago by Eli Heckscher, economic historians have more recently stressed the role of human capital in Scandinavian catch-up. Yet, it remains a puzzle how the “impoverished sophisticate” arose in the context of an extremely unequal political system, which allowed landed elites to capture local governments and block the provision of public schooling. Analyzing differences in spending across municipalities, however, show that investments in elementary education was substantially higher where local governments were dominated by landed elites, which suggests that economic and political elites were not always a barrier to educational expansions. In the final chapter, I analyze the link between agricultural productivity increases and regional growth by exploiting the potato’s introduction in the early 19th century. Evidence from welfare ratios suggest that the cheaper calories from the potato raised living standards significantly, which led to a sharp acceleration in population growth due to Malthusian adjustments in areas endowed with land suitable for potato cultivation.

A key contribution of the chapters in the dissertation is that they provide evidence of how (often minor) regional differences in terms of geography or transportation costs can be amplified to alter both short- and long-term trajectories of local economic development. At a time when regional tensions are again on the rise in Europe, the notion that economic development is not mainly a national process and that present-day patterns of regional inequality often have deep historical roots seems to be a particularly timely takeaway. 

Remembering Gunnar

By: Cormac Ó Gráda, Dublin

Karl Gunnar Persson
19 March 1943 – 14 September 2016

In last his email to me Gunnar Persson was full of the joys of life, looking forward to his trip to Buriano (where he died suddenly a few days later) and explaining how his sons had discovered a way of getting cheap tickets to the QPR-Fulham game all three planned to attend together in late September.

He also appended the anecdote below, which is told in typical Gunnar style.  I corrected a few typos, that is all.

Missing Gunnar, a proverb in Irish comes to mind: Ní bheidh do leithéid arís ann (You were special, one of a kind).

Barter trade between economic historians and a playwright: 

the Brecht- Kuczynski - Postan triangular trade in the early 1950s

As a research student in the early 1970s at the Department of Economic History, Lund University, I had the opportunity to meet Jürgen Kuczynski, the then director of Abteilung Wirtschaftsgeschichte  at the (East) German Academy of Sciences, when he was visiting Lund, invited by Lennart Jörberg. Kuczynski directed a large team of historians producing about 55 volumes of social and economic history, most of them in the 40 volumes series Geschichte der Lage der Arbeiter unter dem Kapitalismus, and other series from the late 1940s and onwards.  During the Cold War many academics in the West were often slightly and sometimes strongly dismissive of the quality of this research project. I really cannot tell if it was seriously tainted by submission to political orthodoxy or whether Western scholars automatically depreciated it. Perhaps it is time to have a fresh look at these books now, when that war is over.

Jürgen Kuczynski

Jürgen Kuczynski was a German communist and Jew, educated in Germany and the US, who fled Hitler in 1936 to England and returned to Germany with the allied forces and worked for them in 1944/45, then a short time as a civil servant in the Soviet zone of Germany. He was a parliamentarian in DDR until the mid 1950s, but published his first books on German working class conditions a couple of years after the war. After his retirement he became a tolerated dissident.

He was a larger than life personality and a good story teller. I remember more stories than the one I am going to tell now. However, I cannot guarantee that all the details in what follows are true. Perhaps it is just a play imagined but never written by Bertold Brecht.  This is what I remember Jürgen Kuczynski told me at that dinner in Lund many years ago. The story refers to a problem with barter trade which occurs when there is lack of convertible currency, pair-wise non-coincidence of wants and restrictions to trade. And amazingly pulp fiction (crime novels), enters as a means of exchange.

The plot and leading actors:

Bertold Brecht

Bertold Brecht, playwright and director of Berliner Ensemble with a keen desire for pulp fiction, say, Mickey Spillane, unavailable in east Berlin bookshops. However, as a cultural protégée in the new DDR regime Brecht had access to luxuries denied to ordinary east Germans, such as cigars. Being the creator of among other plays Mutter Courage and the Three Penny Opera (with Kurt Weil) did not make him a monetary theorist, but he certainly understood the mechanism of barter exchange and how to handle a situation when there was no access to convertible currency.

M. M. Postan economic historian at Cambridge who would like to see what the first volumes of the Lage der Arbeiter looked like and if they could be useful for the volumes of the Cambridge Economic History of Europe he was editing.

Jürgen Kuczynski, who had published the first couple of volumes in the long series of books on working class conditions and lacked access to foreign luxuries, such as cigars, that he was used to.

 The unfolding of the plot: triangular barter trade

1. Kuczynski offered a number of copies of his most recent book to Postan and asked him to pay back in a means of exchange as good as gold: pulp fiction.

2. Postan replied with a selection of pulp fiction, say Mickey Spillane, sent to Kuczynski.

3. Kuczynski exchanged the pulp fiction with Bertold Brecht, who paid Kuczynski in kind with cigars.

Happy End: Pareto optimal trade? Possibly.

A great scholar and friend has passed away

By: Paul Sharp

I always used to joke that I wanted to be like Gunnar when I grew up. What did I mean by that? Certainly I could never hope to be half the scholar he was. No, what I admired most about Gunnar, and the most important thing which my former supervisor and dear friend taught me, was the importance of enjoying life, and work as an integral part of that. His enthusiasm for the latter is reflected by his achievements throughout his career. He had great importance for the internationalization of the Department of Economics at Copenhagen University; for economic history in Denmark and the rest of Europe; for the teaching of economic history, in particular through his textbook on the Economic History of Europe; and last but by no means least he has of course also contributed much in terms of his research. There will be plenty of time to dwell on this in more formal obituaries. The Gunnar I want to remember here was so much more than that. He was truly someone who enjoyed life way beyond academia: he loved the outdoors, sailing, music, art, food and drink, to name just a few examples. Moreover, he was a truly happy and generous man, and someone I always looked up to.

Gunnar on the train on the way back to Copenhagen from Odense and the 2014 Growth Workshop at the University of Southern Denmark. He managed to sit next to two young Russian ladies on their way to a dancing competition, and seemed to enjoy the attention they gave him! 

Thus, his love of life and work intertwined. A few years ago, I interviewed Gunnar for the newsletterof the Cliometric Society. His sense of humour shines out through many of his replies. For example when asked about whether his political beliefs influenced his work, he began his reply by saying “Well I suppose I am more Rosé than Red these days, but I drink both”! He also described how his convictions as what he called a “card-carrying anti-Malthusian” was in part determined by his love of culture, and how the gothic cathedrals he had seen while travelling in his youth had led him to believe that “…the pre-industrial economies of Europe could not possibly be the sort of bare bones subsistence economies Malthusians say they were”.

Although I had also known him as an undergraduate, I think I first became very close to Gunnar while we were both visiting the European University Institute in Florence back in 2007. I was still his PhD student, but he, among other things, found time to enjoy many wonderful dinners with me. I was particularly impressed by his practice of always choosing the cheapest wine, claiming ex ante that it was actually very good, but then “discovering” ex post that it was not so good, with the implication that we would have to order another bottle, but only after the first one had been emptied, thus meaning that we always drank at least a bottle each! This was also when we planned the first edition of the textbook together, sitting outside his beautiful house in Buriano.

We have many unfinished projects together. Indeed, he was very active until the end, and had recently asked me to read through a new chapter he had written for a possible third edition of the textbook. Sadly, we never finished updating a paper we wrote on Tuscan red wines, which remains in working paper limbo. He asked me to work on this during my PhD, I think mostly as an excuse for him to go to a conference on wine economics (which seemed to involve relatively few sessions, and relatively many river cruises and wine tastings). I have frequently teased him about this in recent years, which resulted recently in the promise of a trip to Tuscany with him for the arduous task of visiting various vineyards in order to collect the data on wine prices we needed to finish the paper.

Gunnar and I proudly present the second edition of the textbook to the world in 2015

This was, however, not to be. I met him last on September 8, less than a week before his untimely death in his beloved Italy. We had attended a seminar at the Department of Economics, Copenhagen University, and, as we often did, we went to one of the many bars in Copenhagen with a wide selection of the craft beers he so loved. We didn’t go to our usual: it was the sort of evening which makes Copenhagen seem like paradise, and we sat outside at a different bar next to one of the lakes with a good APA and some salt and vinegar crisps. We weren’t sure where to go for dinner, but I checked my phone and found we were very close to a little French restaurant which had good reviews. There, we first enjoyed a glass of rosé outside, and then went inside for a very good meal, after which we went somewhere else to meet up with some others from his department and mine and the seminar guest. He didn’t enjoy the beer and the smoke at that bar, and anyway it was too late, so he soon left. That evening we had talked a lot about how I was finding it difficult to return to work after a long period of absence due to my daughter being ill, and I apologized for not having made more progress on our many unfinished projects together. He wrote to me the same evening saying

Paul, It was really nice seeing you back on the turf again.

Do not over-extend your commitments.  Well, except when it comes to a beer now and then, of course!

G

It was his typical mix of fatherly and professional advice which meant so much to me. I replied a couple of days later, on September 10:

Yes, thanks for a really enjoyable evening. I will always find time for beer with you!

P

Those were our last words together. How I will miss him. Goodbye Gunnar.

Gunnar Persson: a personal memoir

Karl Gunnar Persson was professor in  Economic
History at University of Copenhagen and one of
the founders of EHES

Written by: Giovanni Federico

Gunnar Persson was tall, big, a little overweight, and a very, very nice man. He loved reading, classical music, cycling, football, eating and drinking good wine, and was a very good cook. He loved his small apartment in Buriano, a village in the hills near Grosseto in southern Tuscany, with a small garden where we have sat many times after good lunches talking and gossiping about economic history and economic historians.  In short, he enjoyed life.

But Gunnar also enjoyed economic history. He was an active and very successful cultural entrepreneur and a great scholar, with a far-sighted intellectual agenda which he pursued throughout his scientific career. His first major work was his book on Pre-industrial Economic Growth (Persson 1989). As the title makes it clear, he did not accept the view of a stagnant and thus an intellectually unexciting pre-industrial world. To be sure, he knew that technical progress before the industrial revolution was slow and erratic, and that income grew very slowly if not at all. Yet, growth could be brought by trade and market integration. Some years later, in his  textbook on economic history of Europe (Persson 2013) he described the struggle between the forces of integration and the forces of disruption (mostly political events such as wars) as the key feature of pre-industrial Europe.   Early modern economic history was not so popular in those times among cliometricians (or ‘new economic historians’ as they were still called) but it has attracted a lot of attention since then. Greg Clark’s Malthusian monography (2007), which Persson criticized in a debate in European Review of Economic History (Persson 2008) was a commercial hit.  Within the last year, the discussion has seen renewed efforts at estimating GDP per capita before 1800 (Fouquet and Broadberry 2015). Although all these estimates cannot be as accurate as modern ones, they do show fluctuations within and across countries which confirm that pre-industrial Europe was not frozen in an immutable Malthusian world.

The interest in pre-modern economic growth related to the second major issue in Gunnar’s research agenda, market integration. His supervisor at Lund University, Lennart Jörberg, had written a pioneering book on the integration of the Swedish domestic market in the 18th and 19th centuries (Jörberg 1972) which, however, had made less impact than it deserved. In the early 1990s, the issue was put on the spotlight again by the joint efforts by Williamson, who focused on transatlantic integration, and Gunnar, who pioneered the research on domestic integration. He organized a seminar in Lerici (a wonderful place, as always with him) in 1994,  a session at the ill-fated Seville/Madrid world conference, and published widely on the issue.

He was the first, in a paper on France (Ejrnæs. and Persson 2000), to apply Threshold Autoregression, which for a while seemed THE method to measure integration (Federico 2012). He published several articles on transatlantic integration, exploring other methods of measurement (Ejrnæs, Persson, Rich 2008, Ejrnæs and Persson 2010) but also cautioning against too hasty inferences from data (Persson 2004). Above all he blended his two major research interest, on pre-modern Europe and market integration in a major book, Grain Markets in Europe 1500-1900 (Persson 1999). There he argued convincingly, with a nice combination of measurement, economic analysis and sifting of contemporary sources, that the ‘modern’ market integration substituted the ‘traditional’ market intervention and regulation as a way to dampen welfare-reducing price fluctuations.

Thus, pursuing a coherent scientific agenda,  he anticipated and shaped scholarly debate on two issues, early modern European economic history and market integration, which are now among the hottest topic in analytical economic history but were by then rather neglected by cliometricians  But he did two other major services to the profession.

First, he spotted a big gap in the literature, the lack of a good textbook on the  economic history of Europe.  He took a bold approach: he wrote a concise book suitable to teach economists who needed the big picture in their jargon without too many details (Persson 2013) .  The book was a hit and it is now in its second edition, which has softened somewhat its original uncompromising stance.

 The second contribution was its role in the birth and early years of the European Historical Economics Society. Gunnar himself has written a detailed account of the process (EHES) which however downplays his role.  Without his drive, and his successful fund-raising, the first congress of the EHES would not have been held, and it is likely that the initiative would have withered. Likewise, a few years later he was instrumental in kick-starting the European Review of Economic History. He served with Vera Zamagni and Tim Hatton as its first editors and, in spite of the scarce number of early submissions, they succeeded in setting a high quality standard, which has propelled the Review to the current rank as one of the top world journals in the field.  This success seemed unthinkable at the beginning. Many prominent scholars were doubtful about the chances of cliometrics in continental Europe, where ‘traditional’ economic  history still prevailed in terms of numbers of practitioners and  university legislation worked against new intellectual movements. Yet, they were proved wrong. Analytical economic history is thriving in Europe, within the limit of budget constraints which are hitting universities in many countries, and Gunnar was instrumental  in achieving all this.

Gunnar retired from teaching in 2013 and the event was marked by a small but very interesting conference in Copenhagen, which ended with a presentation by him about the transformation of the Department  of Economics in Copenhagen from a ‘traditional’ teaching department focused on Danish economics in an international theory-oriented one (alas, with little room for economic history).  But he did not retire from the profession.  The last time we met, he told me that he had just completed and submitted two papers; one on the demography of Buriano with Mette Ejrnæs, and another on measuring pre-industrial economic growth from changes in occupational structure with Christian Groth.  It is a pity that he did not have the opportunity to see them published. But it much more of a pity that he is no longer with us, with his booming laughter, his wise advice and his sharp mind.

This blog post was written by Giovanni Federico,
professor of Economic History, University of Pisa

References
Clark Gregory (2007) A farewell to alms. A brief economic history of the world.Princeton:Princeton University Press
Ejrnæs, Mette and Karl Gunnar Persson (2000), “Market integration and transport costs in France 1825-1903: a threshold error correction approach to the Law of One Price.” Explorations in economic history, 37, pp. 149-173.
Ejrnæs Mette, Karl Gunnar Persson and Søren Rich (2008) ‘Feeding the British: convergence and market efficiency in the nineteenth century grain trade’ Economic History Review 61  S1 pp.140-171
Federico Giovanni (2012) ‘How much do we know about market integration in Europe?’, Economic history review, 65,  pp. 470-497
Fouquet Roger and Stephen Broadberry (2015)  ‘Seven centuries of European economic growth and decline’ Journal of economic perspectives 29, pp.227-244
Jorberg Lennart (1972) A history of prices in Sweden 1732-1914, Lund:CWK Gleerup
Persson Karl Gunnar (1988) Pre-industrial economic growth: social organization and technical progress in Europe Oxford: Blackwell
Persson Karl Gunnar (1999) Grain markets in Europe 1500-1900 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Persson Karl Gunnar (2004) ‘Mind the gap! Transport costs and price convergence in the nineteenth century Atlantic economy’ European Review of Economic History 8  pp.125-147
Persson Karl Gunnar (2008) ‘The Malthus delusion’ European Review of Economic history, 12 pp. 165-17
Persson Karl Gunnar (2013) An economic history of Europe Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; second edition (with Paul Sharp) 2015

Karl Gunnar Persson has passed away

Professor Karl Gunnar Persson

This morning I was reached by the sad news that professor Karl Gunnar Persson has left us. He was one of the founders of the European Historical Economics Society, its first president and the first editor of the European Review of Economic History.

More importantly Karl Gunnar Persson was one of the warmest and kindest professors I have ever met. He combined friendliness with intelligence and humour. He was always helpful to his younger colleagues and inspired us by showing his passion for economic history. His work on economic history included various aspects of market integration, trade and long-run growth. In his latest work he suggested a new approach to analyse income growth in pre-industrial Britain by changes in occupational structure. 

Karl Gunnar recently updated his leading text book on the Economic History of Europe 600 to the present. The analysis was sharp and elegant, as in all of Karl Gunnar's work.

Karl Gunnar Persson (right) at the EHES conference in Pisa 2015.

I was in contact with Karl Gunnar just some week ago when I asked him whether he would like to write something about the 100^th working paper being published in the EHES working paper series. As usual, Karl Gunnar was quick to respond and had produced a witty and intelligent text in no time at all. Read his blog post here.

I am certain that Karl Gunnar will be greatly missed by the members of European Historical Economics Society, by his colleagues and by his many friends. Speaking for myself, I know I certainly will. 

This blog post was written by Kerstin Enflo.

Beyond GDP: A Long-Term View on Human Wellbeing and Inequality

EHES Summer school - apply now

How much better is life today than it was in the past? And do we always need income growth to improve welfare? This summer school is devoted to exploring a new research avenue that uses broad indicators of human welfare and the standard of living to measure levels and growth of economic well-being worldwide.

During the last centuries economic growth as conventionally measured by gross domestic product per capita has shown big swings and long periods of disappointing performance. But at the same time in many countries people became on average healthier, taller, and older, and are enjoying increasing leisure time. Historical research into the human condition and level of living has revealed considerable growth trends in the general biological standard of living of world citizens. To understand this paradox of sometimes disappointing economic outcomes and favourable changes in the human condition, we need to re-examine and analyse indicators of human well-being such as economic living standards and broader human development standards.

This summer school focuses on the comparative study of income growth and will study its causal relationship with inequality, health, and leisure, which are widely seen as crucial indicators in the measurement of economic welfare.

The summer school is endorsed by the European Historical Economics Society. It is hosted by the Groningen Growth and Development Centre, a research centre affiliated with the Faculty of Economics and Business. The Summer School will last for 5 days and will include lectures of key-speakers such as Prof. Jan Luiten van Zanden (University of Utrecht) and Prof. Leandro Prados de la Escosura (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid). The afternoon sessions will be devoted to presentations and discussions of the research topics of the participants (doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers).

Dates 
28 June - 3 July 2015
Application deadline: 1 April 2015

Level 
PhD students and scholars who recently completed their doctorate

Coordinators 
Prof. Dr. Herman de Jong, University of Groningen
Dr. Joost Veenstra, University of Groningen

Fee 
€ 200 (including housing)

Apply now

Download the flyer

International conference on economic and business history of Latin America

Call for papers

As part of the 80th anniversary celebrations of the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Chile, the Faculty is hosting an International Conference on the Economic and Business History of Latin America to be held on December 12th, 2014 in its premises in Santiago, Chile. The conference invites contributions in English or Spanish in all areas associated to the themes of the conference. A selection of the participating papers will be invited to be published in a special issue of the journal Estudios de Economía (indexed in Thomson ISI- JCR), with Professor Bernardo Bátiz-Lazo (Bangor University) as guest editor. The conference is organized with the sponsorship of Universidad de Santiago de Chile.

The conference is also organizing a posters session open to undergraduate and postgraduate students undertaking their thesis in any field relevant to the conference. The best posters will be awarded a prize.

The deadline for submitting contributions and posters is October 19th, 2014. An extended abstract of up to 1000 words explaining the research question, the data and methods employed and the main results and conclusions should be sent to ebhla2014@fen.uchile.cl.  The deadline for sending the complete versions of the papers is December 1st, and the deadline for submitting the final, revised versions of the papers to be published in Estudios de Economía is January 18th, 2015. The special issue will be published in May 2015.

Gender in Economic History

Scandinavian Economic History Review launches a Gender in Economic History Virtual Special Issue

Gender’ is a central category in political and social debates on equal rights and opportunities as well as on inequality, and in broader cultural discussions. It seems widely underused and too narrowly used in economic history where the major focus is still on equal wages and participation of women in the labour market. Other aspects of ‘gender’, for example relating to entrepreneurial activity, to the business of sex, to ‘maleness’, to consumption or more generally to social life, which are heavily debated in cultural history and cultural studies, do not yet receive sufficient attention in economic and business history. The Scandinavian Economic History Review, is no exception.

Therefore, Scandinavian Economic History Review, launches a virtual special issue about gender issues. The aim is to make a broader audience aware of present and past research published in the journal. The editors of the journal have selected articles published over the last two decades to show how the discussion has developed over time. The Scandinavian Economic History Review also encourages researchers to further advance the field in new directions and to submit manuscripts dealing with new approaches to ‘gender’ in economic history.

Read more from the journal here.

Jacob Weisdorf, Alfred Reckendrees (editors)

Announcement: European Summer School in Economic History

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS 

Humboldt University, Berlin, 1-5 September 2014

The topic of this year’s summer school is Catching up or falling behind? Institutions, geography and economic development of Eastern Europe in the long-run.

Comparative economic development is a dominant topic on the global research agenda and economic history has made important contributions to the debate over the drivers of long-run growth. Why some countries or regions are rich while others are poor is a question that has inspired both economists and historians for a long time. Institutions, geography and resource endowments have all been attributed important roles in the literature explaining diverging trends in the global economy over the last two centuries.

Eastern Europe was heavily affected by the grand transformations of modern history. Old empires had fallen and new ones emerged, and in the twentieth century independent nation states were formed. Not only were the borders in Europe’s eastern periphery redrawn multiple times; formal institutions, the modes and structures of production have been transformed dramatically. Yet, Eastern European economists paid little attention to long-run development, and thus New Economic History that applies social science theory and quantitative analytical tools to studying the past could not make strong inroads into Eastern European scholarship. 

The Summer School, sponsored by the European Historical Economics Society, Humboldt University and the London School of Economics, is dedicated to reversing this trend by bringing together young scholars from different parts of Europe whose research focuses on the economic history of Central, East and South-East Europe (CESEE) or on comparative development across different European regions.

For more information about how to apply, see the following link:

http://www.ehes.org/EHES_Summer_School_Berlin.pdf

EREH new editor: Joan Rosés

Joan Rosés is professor in Economic
History at London School of Economics and
new editor of the EREH

We continue to present the new editors of the European Review of Economic History with an interview with Joan Rosés:

How did you get interested in Economic history?

My interest in History began relatively earlier, during the last years of the primary school. Later, when I was about 16 years old, I discovered economics by chance. I was enthusiastic about two TV series: "Free to Choose" of Milton Friedman and “The Age of Uncertainty” of John Kenneth Galbraith. During my bachelor in History, my favorite subject was, indeed, economic history. Then, it was obvious for me to try to pursue an academic career in the discipline.

Could you describe your carrier briefly?

I finished my bachelor in History and Geography in 1990 at the University of Barcelona. Then, I spent four years as assistant in the Department of Economics at Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, while I studied a two-year master in Economic History at University of Barcelona. In 1995-96, I moved to the European University Institute, in Florence, where I finished my dissertation in 1998. My supervisor was Jaime Reis. In the same 1998, I published my first article at EREH. After a short stage at UC Berkeley, I came back to Spain and get a post at Universidad Carlos III of Madrid. I was at Carlos III for about 15 years (until September 2013). Since then, I’m professor of Economic History at LSE. From mid-1990s, I published many articles in all major economic history journals. My research interest covers many topics but now I’m most interested in historical economic geography. Typically, I work with a myriad of co-authors and I’m engaged in several projects at the same time.

In general, what do you look for in a submission and why?

It is difficult to say because each submission is special and unique. Broadly speaking, a good submission in economic history should contain good ideas and substantial evidence. Economic history is an applied discipline and we need historical evidence to sustain our arguments. However, we cannot write economic history in isolation. We should know what other disciplines (particularly Economics and History) have already said about our research topic. We cannot accept ahistorical articles or research which ignores the basics of economics or statistics.      

How would you describe the perfect EREH article?

This is certainly a harsh question and I haven’t the definitive answer. From the point of view of the Review, the perfect article is an article that gets many citations. Unfortunately, editors cannot predict ex-ante the amount of citations of any article. Then, the perfect article is an article that combines an original contribution with good scholarship.  Typically, these articles open new avenues for research.

What important changes do you see happening in Economic History research right now? How do you think this will influence future contributions in the journal? 

It seems that the Cliometric Revolution has been firmly established in the profession. Also, in the last five years, a new generation of economists seems increasingly interested in the field and economic history is expanding in many economics departments. Obviously, this opens a new window of opportunity for the profession but also represents a new challenge for us. We need to make the discipline more interdisciplinary and relevant. I expect that the field will interact, even more, with other fields particularly Development Economics and Economic Geography.

If you ask me for the hot topics over the next years I expect to receive more submissions in Historical Economic Geography, inequality and financial-monetary history (particularly articles about crises and failed/successful monetary experiments). Another area which should expand rapidly is economic history of developing countries. We need urgently more research in Asia, Africa, South America and the Caribbean countries.  

EREH new editor: Dan Bogart

The European Review of Economic History will soon have two new editors – Dan Bogart (UC-Irvine) and Joan Rosés (LSE). They will work together with Nikoulas Wolf (Univ. Humboldt) who will remain in office. We managed to get quick interviews both with Dan Bogart and Joan Rosés. First one out is Dan Bogart:

 

Dan Bogart is Associate Professor in Economic History
at UC-Irvine and new editor of the EREH.

How did you get interested in Economic history?

As an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota, I read two books that peaked my interest in economic history. The first was Robert Fogel's Railroads and American Economic Growth: Essays in Econometric History, and the second was Doug North's Structure and Change in Economic History. I thought Fogel's methodology of counter-factual history was very innovative and gave a shocking answer to a big question. I wanted to imitate Fogel's work. North's books was inspiring in that it provided a perspective on the long-run and stimulated my thinking on the role of the state. I have been grappling with this issue ever since. 

As new editor of the EREH, what role will you play in the journal?

My role as editor is three-fold. The first and most important is to ensure that the best papers get published. My second role is to encourage high quality submissions to EREH. Third, is to promote research in economic history more generally.

In general, what do you look for in a submission and how would you describe the perfect EREH article?

In my view the best papers tell us something new about economic history and are well executed. Novelty is important because the field of economic history needs to continually advance. Good execution is also important as we would like the results of published papers to be regarded as credible or believable long into the future.  I should add that in terms of methodology, I don't believe there is any 'right' approach to economic history. I am regularly surprised by new and informative approaches to research. 

What important changes do you see happening in Economic History research right now? How do you think this will influence future contributions in the journal?

For the last decade, there has been a trend in economic history towards greater theoretical rigor and improved identification in econometrics.  I see this trend as continuing for the foreseeable future. However, I would hope that scholars don't focus exclusively on identification when choosing their research questions.  Economic history has always focused on the big questions, like the sources of the Great Divergence, even if a precise answer cannot be given with current data or techniques. There will always be room in the field for more exploratory research. 

Announcement: Call for papers Esbjerg FRESH Meeting

Topic: Ancient Economy and Early Economic Developments

Date: October 1-2, 2014

Hosting Institution: Department of Environmental and Business Economics, University of Southern Denmark, Esbjerg

Keynote Speakers: Erwin Bulte, Wageningen UR; Carl Hampus Lyttkens, Lund University

Local Organizer: Brooks Kaiser

FRESH Organizers: Rowena Gray, Paul Sharp and Martin Uebele

For this meeting we particularly encourage papers on all aspects of ancient economy and early economic developments, but submissions from scholars working in other areas may be considered. 

 Prospective speakers should submit a one-page abstract and a short CV via the link on the FRESH website by May 31.

Notification of acceptance will be given by July 1.

For more information about FRESH meetings, please visit the FRESH website at http://www.sdu.dk/en/ivoe/fresh

please see also the EHES website

http://www.ehes.org

and the HEDG website

http://www.sdu.dk/en/ivoe/hedg

Announcement: FRESH incorporated into EHES

The Frontier Research in Economic and Social History (FRESH) organizers are pleased to announce that at the recent European Historical Economics Society (EHES) trustees meeting on March 29, 2014 it was decided to incorporate FRESH within the EHES. FRESH will continue to be supported by and administered from the University of Southern Denmark and the Historical Economics and Development Group (HEDG), but we believe that becoming an initiative of the EHES gives us the solid academic backing we need to continue promoting economic history and the FRESH workshop format around the world. Moreover, the EHES has generously offered to fund each FRESH meeting, so that we can offer some limited financial support to junior scholars who wish to attend, enabling even more to benefit from the high international standards of our workshops.

For more information about FRESH meetings, please visit the FRESH website at http://www.sdu.dk/en/ivoe/fresh

Would you like to organize a FRESH meeting?

FRESH meetings have no permanent venue but take place at any institution around the world where there is an interest in having the FRESH meeting. Hosting institutions will be asked to provide a venue, including electronic equipment, and lunch and dinner for the meeting participants (usually 10-15). If you would like to organize a FRESH meeting at your institution, please contact the meeting organizers (contact details on the FRESH website: www.sdu.dk/en/ivoe/fresh).

Would you like to keep updated on FRESH activities?

There are two ways to sign up for updates on our activities. You can either ‘like’ FRESH on our facebook page (www.facebook.com/freshmeetings), or you can subscribe to eh.news at eh.net.

From the FRESH organizers: Rowena Gray, Paul Sharp and Martin Uebele

Debating Big Ideas in Economic History

A tribute to Jaime Reis

Lisbon, 6 June 2014 

We are pleased to announce a conference in honour of Professor Jaime Reis who will retire in 2014. The conference is organized by the Social Sciences Institute, University of Lisbon and Nova School of Business and Economics, and will be held on 6 June 2014.

Jaime Reis is well-known for his contributions to Portuguese, European and International Economic History on a widespread range of topics that include studies on economic backwardness, on financial and banking history, on education and institutional developments, as well as on the determinants of long-term growth. These topics will be discussed in four panels with contributions from specialists in the fields and the public.

All those who wish to attend are welcome to join. For further details, including recommendations for accommodation and dinner registration, please contact the convenors or Marta Castelo Branco (at marta.castelobranco@ics.ulisboa.pt).

Programme

14:00-15:00 – Long-term growth

Leandro Prados de la Escosura (U. Carlos III) & Regina Grafe (EUI, Florence)

15:00-16:00 – The development of financial systems

Larry Neal (U. Illinois) & Rui Pedro Esteves (U. Oxford)

16:00-16:30 – Coffee-break

16:30-17:30 – Human capital and living standards

Cormac O’Grada (U. College, Dublin) & Joan Rosés (LSE)

17:30-18:30 – Portuguese economic history

Luciano Amaral (Nova, Lisbon) & Pablo Martín-Aceña (U. Alcalá)

19:30-20:30 – Tba

20:30 – Dinner at Nova School of Business and Economics

Convenors:

José Luís Cardoso, Leonor Freire Costa, Pedro Lains & Álvaro Ferreira da Silva

Breaking news

This is the blog of the European Historical Economics Society. Our aim is to promote European research and training in economic history. We publish posts from events organized by the society, articles published in our journal (European Review of Economic History), interviews with leading scolars in economic history and other news related to the society's aim and its members. If you are interested in contributing to the blog, just be in touch with me.

Kerstin Enflo,
Editor of the blog