Economic history

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Economic history is the study of how economic phenomena, as well as economic theories, evolved in the past.

Economic history is undertaken using both historical methods and the application of economic theory. It includes Business History and overlaps with areas of social history such as demographic history and labor history.

Practitioners and advocates of the first approach, which was for a long time dominant in the United Kingdom, generally regarded economic history as being either an independent discipline or a subfield of history. Practitioners of the second approach, which is more influential in the United States and rapidly extending worldwide, usually regard economic history as a subfield of economics. The term cliometrics (a reference to Clio, the Muse of history) is used to describe the application of econometric techniques to the study of economic history. In France, economic theory and demographics was early integrated into mainstream historiography due to the large impact of the Annales School of history from the 1920s and onwards.

Economic history has been a contentious issue in the United Kingdom for many years. The London School of Economics and Oxbridge had numerous duels over the separation of Economics and Economic theory. Oxbridge believed that pure economics involved a component of economic history and that the two were irreversibly entangled. The relative newcomer, the London School of Economics (LSE), fought for a different case: they believed that Economic history warranted its own course, program, study and research apart from pure or standard economics. Eventually, over the long run, the LSE seems to have had it right: many schools in the UK as well as the US have now developed programs in economics history which have their roots in the LSE model of separating economics and economic history. While the two academic subject areas are significantly unique, of course, economics and history - together - are the back bone of the entire discipline. Often, economic historians such as Nicholas Crafts (of LSE fame), Douglass North (Nobel laureate in economics) and Daron Acemoglu are called upon to advise for some of the world foremost economic institutions: WEF, WTO, OECD and others.

List of Economic Histories by country

[edit] See also

EAEPE
Price revolution
History of economic thought
History of international trade
List of recessions
List of countries by past GDP (PPP) - For historical GDP (PPP) figures from 1 CE to 1998 CE
List of countries by past GDP (Nominal) - For historical GDP (Nominal) figures from 1998 to 2003

[edit] External links

[edit] Economic History Services

EH.Net Economic History Services - Includes Economic History Encyclopedia, Ask the Professor, Book Reviews, databases, directories, bibliographies, mailing lists, and an inflation calculator.
International Economic History Association (IEHA)
Economic History Association

[edit] By country

EH.Net Encyclopedia:
- Australia
- Hawaii
- Hong Kong
- Indonesia
- Israel
- Japan
- Korea
- Malaysia
- New Zealand
- Norway
- Portugal
- Sweden
- Taiwan
- Uruguay

[edit] Data

Flandreau: Global Finance data series
Historicalstatistics.org - Links to historical economic statistics for different countries and regions.
Angus Maddison's Historical Dataseries -Series on GDP, Population and GDP per capita from the year 0 up to 2003
Groningen Growth and Development Centre Total Economy Database -Series on GDP, Population, Employment, Hours worked, GDP per capita and productivity (per person and per hour) from 1950 up to 2006