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An Economist’s Guide to Economic History

• © 2018
• Matthias Blum 0 ,
• Christopher L. Colvin 1

Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK

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• Introduces the field of economic history to economists
• Calls academics into action to affect change in economics pedagogy and research
• Enables readers to think more critically about the economic ideas that are used today

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Economic History (PEHS)

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Table of contents (50 chapters)

Front matter, introduction, or why we started this project.

Matthias Blum, Christopher L. Colvin

Economics Versus History

• Christopher L. Colvin, Homer Wagenaar

Economics, Economic History and Historical Data

• Vincent J. Geloso
• Economic Theory and Economic History
• Robert P. Gilles

Economic History and the Policymaker

Economic history, the history of economic thought and economic policy.

• Graham Brownlow

Teaching Economics with Economic History

• Matthias Flückiger

Money and Central Banking

• John D. Turner

Globalisation and Trade

• Alan de Bromhead

Immigration and Labour Markets

• Sebastian T. Braun

Financial Institutions and Markets

• Meeghan Rogers

Financial Crises and Bubbles

• William Quinn

Sovereign Debt and State Financing

• Larry D. Neal

Health and Development

• Vellore Arthi

Education and Human Capital

• Sascha O. Becker

Famine and Disease

• Guido Alfani, Cormac Ó Gráda

Women and Children

• Jane Humphries
• Economic crises
• Economic policy
• Economic institutions and markets
• Global history, the Great Divergence
• Globalisation
• Casual inference
• Time series analysis
• Archival methods
• Economic history for economists
• American Economic History
• The History of Economic Thought and Economic Policy
• Teaching Economics
• Econometric Identification
• Network analysis
• Asian Economic History
• European Economic History
• Latin American Economic History
• African Economic History

About this book

Without economic history, economics runs the risk of being too abstract or parochial, of failing to notice precedents, trends and cycles, of overlooking the long-run and thus misunderstanding ‘how we got here’. Recent financial and economic crises illustrate spectacularly how the economics profession has not learnt from its past.

This important and unique book addresses this problem by demonstrating the power of historical thinking in economic research. Concise chapters guide economics lecturers and their students through the field of economic history, demonstrating the use of historical thinking in economic research, and advising them on how they can actively engage with economic history in their teaching and learning.

Blum and Colvin bring together important voices in the field to show readers how they can use their existing economics training to explore different facets of economic history. Each chapter introduces a question or topic, historical context or research method and explores how they can be used in economics scholarship and pedagogy. In a century characterised to date by economic uncertainty, bubbles and crashes,  An Economist’s Guide to Economic History  is essential reading.

For further information visit http://www.blumandcolvin.org

“Economists have much to gain from studying economic history seriously. This excellent volume explains why, elaborates what this entails, and demonstrates the potential for synergies between economics and economic history. The result is a compelling manifesto.” (Nicholas Crafts, Professor of Economic History, University of Warwick, UK)

​“The list of contributors to this project is truly impressive, as is the breadth of the topics covered. The result is a terrific teaching resource that will give students a good sense of the many ways in which economic history can help economics come alive.” (Kevin H. O’Rourke, Chichele Professor of Economic History, University of Oxford, UK)

Editors and Affiliations

About the editors, bibliographic information.

Book Title : An Economist’s Guide to Economic History

Editors : Matthias Blum, Christopher L. Colvin

Series Title : Palgrave Studies in Economic History

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96568-0

Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan Cham

eBook Packages : Economics and Finance , Economics and Finance (R0)

Copyright Information : Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018

Softcover ISBN : 978-3-319-96567-3 Published: 18 December 2018

eBook ISBN : 978-3-319-96568-0 Published: 08 December 2018

Series ISSN : 2662-6497

Series E-ISSN : 2662-6500

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XXVII, 479

Number of Illustrations : 18 b/w illustrations

Topics : Popular Science in Economics , Learning & Instruction , Economic History , History of Economic Thought/Methodology , Political Economy/Economic Systems , Economic Theory/Quantitative Economics/Mathematical Methods

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About the journal

The European Review of Economic History is a major outlet for research in economic history. Articles cover the whole range of economic history -- papers on European, non-European, comparative and world economic history are all welcome …

Content from European Review of Economic History

Virtual issue in honor of professor nicholas crafts (1949 – 2023).

Join us in honoring Professor Nicholas Crafts, who passed away on 6 October 2023. Nick was arguably the most prominent British economic historian of his generation, and was a stalwart contributor to EREH  since its inception. We commemorate his career and dedication to economic history by collecting all of his papers published in our journal throughout the years.

Ninth  EREH  Fast Track Meeting 2024

The ninth EREH fast track meeting, organised by the European Historical Economics Society and the editors of the European Review of Economic History , is due to take place online by March 2024.

Browse the highlight articles selected by the editors from recent issues of  European Review of Economic History .

Read the latest editor's choice articles

Call for Papers: Transport and history: pushing the frontiers of data, measurement, and outcomes

New data sources are being used in the study of transport history. Historians are now digitizing maps, registers of shipwrecks, and railway time-tables among others. This special issue seeks to explore the opportunities and challenges of these new sources. Submission deadline: 1 November 2024.

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Call for Survey Articles

The editors will commission many new survey articles, but we are happy to consider unsolicited proposals. Those interested in writing a survey article for the Review are invited to begin with a summary of about five to ten pages, describing the main contents of the proposed survey, explaining why the topic is deserving of our readers' attention and listing the main references to be covered.

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Positive Check is the blog of the European Historical Economics Society . The blog publishes posts from events organized by the society, articles published in the European Review of Economic History , interviews with leading scholars in economic history and other news related to the society's aim and its members.

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The Figuerola Prize

The European Historical Economics Society is pleased to offer a bi-annual prize worth €2000 to the author of the best article published in the European Review of Economic History.

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PRESERVING THE PAST, ILLUMINATING THE PRESENT, SHAPING THE FUTURE

Join us for the eha annual meeting in sacramento, california, september 6-8, eha annual meeting, join us in sacramento for the 2024 annual meeting.

Please join us in sunny Sacramento, California, as we extend a warm invitation to the 84th Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association September 6-8, 2024. Set against the backdrop of California’s rich history and heritage, we will explore the intriguing theme of “Globalization: Perspectives from the Past” amidst Sacramento’s backdrop of lush parks, historic landmarks, and a vibrant cultural scene.

Discover how earlier eras of globalization shape our present and future while engaging in thought-provoking conversations with fellow experts. This isn’t just another convention; it’s your chance to challenge conventions, connect with like-minded scholars, and uncover new dimensions of economic history.

Globalization: Perspectives from the Past

The theme for the EHA 2024 meeting is Globalization: Perspectives from the Past. Globalization refers to the movement of goods, services, people, capital, and technology across countries. 

By many measures, the twenty-first century has become more globalized than at any time in history, yet its future is in doubt with the rise of geopolitical conflict and doubts about its benefits to workers in advanced countries. How do earlier eras of globalization compare, and what also can be learned from the interconnected nature of markets and people, which goes back to ancient times? How have government policies toward globalization differed across countries and changed over time?  

New data sources and methodologies have allowed researchers to examine the political, economic, and social consequences of increased trade and finance as well as migration across countries over longer periods of time and spanning a richer set of countries across the globe.

Jeremy Land, Ph.D. Postdoctoral Researcher University of Gothenberg

EHA Meeting Coordinator

THE 2023 ECONOMIC SCIENCES LAUREATE

Nobel memorial prize in economic sciences.

Congratulations to this year’s economic sciences laureate, Claudia Goldin, who provided the first comprehensive account of women’s earnings and labour market participation through the centuries. Claudia is a Harvard Professor and an EHA Member.

By trawling through the archives and compiling and correcting historical data, Goldin has been able to present new and often surprising facts. The fact that women’s choices have often been, and remain, limited by marriage and responsibility for the home and family is at the heart of her analyses and explanatory models.

Her insights reach far outside the borders of the US and similar patterns have been observed in many other countries. Her research brings us a better understanding of the labour markets of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

CLAUDIA GOLDIN, 2023 NOBEL PRIZE WINNER, EHA MEMBER AND PAST PRESIDENT (2000)

The EHA recognizes excellence in research, publication, and teaching of economic history by awarding several annual and biennial prizes.

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The EHA supports research in economic history through multiple grant programs.

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The EHA supports research in economic history through multiple grant programs. Most of these are administered by the Committee on Research in Economic History (CREH) and one by the Annual Meetings Program Committee.

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Teaching excellence, dissertation awards, publications awards, please join us.

EHA’s Annual Meeting is held each fall, usually in September. This year our meeting will be held September 6-8, 2024 in Sacramento, California.

84th Annual EHA Meeting

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Melissa Dell is a former Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows and a Global Scholar in the Institutions, Organizations and Growth program at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Melissa's research focuses on the interplay between the state, non-state actors, and economic development. In particular, she has examined the relationship between government crackdowns and drug violence in Mexico, as well as the persistence of poverty in Mexico and Peru.... Read more about Melissa Dell

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Policy approaches to addressing a history of racial discrimination

Key takeaways.

• Race-blind policies can inadvertently exacerbate racial inequalities by failing to address the lingering effects of past discrimination. To reduce anti-Black discrimination, policymakers must explicitly consider how these policies interact with historical injustices created by past legislation.
• Recent research has shown that historical injustices, such as slavery and Jim Crow laws, continue to impact racial inequality today due to systemic discrimination that perpetuates the effects of past discrimination.
• Comprehensive strategies that effectively address the consequences of historical injustices are essential to ensure equal opportunities for all members of society. This principle applies not only to racial inequality but to all forms of inequality and discrimination.

M ay 17 marked the 70th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawing segregation in public schools. And it’s been 60 years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act that banned discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.

Despite major court rulings and landmark legislation meant to right the wrongs of racist laws, inequality persists – partly because the impacts of slavery and segregation were never fully considered in the formulation of the policies meant to address racial disparities.

My research traces the history of legislated discrimination and shows how those now-illegal policies continue to significantly impact Black Americans. Without a thorough understanding of that history, policymakers run the risk of inadvertently perpetuating systemic discrimination and exacerbating existing inequalities.

This policy brief lays out my work and suggests steps that government officials can take toward ensuring more racially equitable economic opportunities for Americans.

The long-term impact of slavery and Jim Crow laws

My research with Hugo Reichardt (Althoff and Reichardt 2024) examines the economic progress of individual Black families from their enslavement to the present day. Our work reveals that Black families have faced repeated obstacles to realizing their full economic potential, and those hurdles often emerged because of past hurdles they faced – the very definition of systemic discrimination (Bohren, Hull, Imas 2023).

Specifically, we show that the timing and location of a family's emancipation from slavery continue to influence their economic status today. Black families whose ancestors were enslaved until the Civil War have considerably lower education, income, and wealth than Black families whose ancestors were free before the four-year war began in 1861.

For example, we find that a Black man with enslaved ancestry had $12,500 less in predicted annual income in 2023 than a Black man with free Black ancestry – a Free-Enslaved gap that is around one-quarter of the corresponding Black-white income gap today. Gaps of similar magnitude have persisted throughout the 20th and 21st centuries in other outcomes including education and wealth.

The Free-Enslaved gap persists largely because systemic forces drastically disadvantaged families enslaved until the Civil War and then under the subsequent Jim Crow laws that disenfranchised Black voters, limited Black geographic and economic mobility, and mandated racial segregation throughout the South. Longer enslavement increased the likelihood of a family being concentrated in the Deep South (Figure 1), where the strictest Jim Crow regimes emerged after 1877 and limited Black economic progress.

Figure 1: Number of enslaved people (left) and free Black Americans (right) in 1860

The state and local Jim Crow laws enacted in Southern states affected all Black Americans living in those jurisdictions.

For example, free Black families in Louisiana — who had attained relatively high economic position — lost their protected legal status once Jim Crow began. By the mid-20th century, their economic position had converged with formerly enslaved families due to the severe limits imposed by Louisiana's oppressive policies. In contrast, white Americans’ economic trajectories, such as their educational attainment, were entirely uncorrelated with those of Black Americans across different states or counties, highlighting the race-specific nature of Jim Crow’s impact.

On the flip side, families who had been enslaved in regions that ended up adopting less severe Jim Crow laws made substantial economic strides in the decades after slavery (see Figure 2). For example, the regression discontinuity design in our study reveals that Black families freed in Louisiana attained 1.2 fewer years of education by 1940 compared to families freed just a few miles away in Texas. But even in Texas and other states with less severe Jim Crow laws, Black families were still disadvantaged relative to white families by being excluded from specific occupations, industries, and firms; and facing other forms of racial discrimination, particularly in the housing and consumer markets. The impact of systemic racism was pervasive and continued to hinder Black economic progress even in areas with less oppressive Jim Crow policies.

Figure 2: Jim Crow’s impact on the education of Black families

While it was difficult to advance economically in areas with restrictive Jim Crow laws, a natural experiment in the construction of schools shows that Black Americans effectively seized opportunities when they were accessible.

Specifically, the Rosenwald school program – a philanthropic effort to build schools for Black children – provided access to education for almost a third of all Black children in the South between 1913 and 1932 (Aaronson and Mazumder 2011). We show that gaining access to a school translated into large gains in education among Black children and improved their long-run economic outcomes.

Black men today whose fathers had access to a Rosenwald school (for plausibly exogenous reasons) today are 40 percent more likely to hold a college degree than those whose fathers did not have access.

These results highlight that when and where their environment allowed, Black Americans made substantial progress over generations. The fact that the vast majority of formerly enslaved Americans made far less progress than they could have is because they were concentrated in soon-to-be Jim Crow states.

Systemic discrimination – higher exposure to discrimination due to past discrimination – is at the core of why Black Americans' socioeconomic status throughout recent decades has continued to depend on their ancestors' enslavement status. Even today, the income and wealth gap between Black Americans whose ancestors were either free or enslaved is 20 to 70 percent of the gap between Black and white Americans.

How policies interact with the effects of past discrimination

Having established the impact that legalized discrimination continues to have on the socioeconomic status of Black Americans, the next question is how these persistent effects interact with race-blind policies to exacerbate systemic discrimination.

The World War II G.I. Bill is a case in point. The G.I. Bill provided virtually all World War II veterans with generous subsidies to gain additional education, finance their first home, and purchase businesses and farms. The policy has been celebrated as a huge success and credited with creating America’s middle class.

But it also has become increasingly clear that Black veterans benefited from the policy substantially less than white Americans despite the race-blind statutory terms of the policy.

First, fewer Black men had the opportunity to serve due to racial discrimination in the military. They also had lower levels of education resulting from slavery and Jim Crow (Althoff and Reichardt 2024).

Second, even among the Black Americans who served, many faced severe obstacles in using their benefits (Katznelson 2005). Many colleges did not accept Black Americans at the time, limiting their ability to use the G.I. Bill's educational benefits, especially in the segregated South (Turner and Bound 2003).

In the housing market, severe discrimination among sellers and financial lending institutions made it hard to use the G.I. Bill's homeowner benefits (Cohen 2003). Redlining, anti-Black covenants, and other government-condoned discriminatory practices limited the areas in which Black veterans were able to buy property, impacting the returns they could achieve from homeownership (Fishback et al. 2021, Ali 2023, Hynsjö and Perdoni 2024). A survey at the time concluded that in 13 cities in Mississippi, only two of over 3,000 loans guaranteed through the G.I. Bill had been granted to Black veterans (Cohen 2003, p. 171).

The G.I. Bill’s failure to Black veterans lies in ignoring race. This failure manifested in at least three key ways.

First, the bill's benefits were designed primarily with white veterans in mind, reflecting the broader trend of policies at the time that Katznelson (2005) termed "affirmative action for white people."

Second, the decision to allow local offices to administer benefits, a provision heavily advocated for by Southern states, enabled rampant racial discrimination, particularly in the South, where nearly all administrators were white.

Third, the federal government failed to seize the opportunity to combat discrimination by tying G.I. Bill funds to anti-discrimination efforts. For instance, it could have mandated that any institution receiving G.I. Bill funds – such as colleges, mortgage providers, or employers – must commit to providing equal access to veterans regardless of race. Alternatively, the bill could have included specific provisions designed to support Black veterans, acknowledging and addressing the unique challenges they faced due to systemic racism. By failing to confront racial inequality head-on, the G.I. Bill perpetuated and even exacerbated the disparities between white and Black families.

The policy forcefully highlights the problem of ignoring race in policy design. If the goal of policymakers is to design equitable policies, they must consider the lingering impact of past discrimination.

There are many lessons policymakers can learn from the unintended consequences of the G.I. Bill. Considering and understanding government policies that led to discrepancies in formal education and other opportunities is crucial to ending systemic discrimination. Policies that encourage job training, educational opportunities and increased oversight to mitigate discrimination in benefit usage, have been implemented and reflect important progress. What the G.I. Bill highlights, however, remains timely and pressing: ignoring race is not a solution to fighting discrimination – it can exacerbate racial inequality through systemic discrimination.

The Biden administration's Child Tax Credit reform illustrates how race-blind policies, calibrated to the needs of disadvantaged groups, can enhance racial equity. By increasing benefits for low-income families (disproportionately Black) and eliminating work requirements that hindered single mothers (more prevalent among Black families), the reform significantly reduced racial disparities (Parolin et al. 2022). The reform's positive effect on racial equity was likely the result of careful consideration of the needs of Americans close to the poverty line, but Congress failed to make those reforms permanent, jeopardizing the longevity of the policy’s impact.

Policy implications

There are several policy proposals being considered to combat the legacy of past discrimination. These policies must be carefully designed and targeted.

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Georgia) has recently reintroduced the G.I. Bill Restoration Act, aimed at addressing the racial inequities perpetuated by the original G.I. Bill. The legislation seeks to provide the families of Black World War II veterans who were denied full access to G.I. Bill benefits due to racial discrimination with the opportunity to receive those benefits today.

The approach of carefully identifying and addressing specific disparities created by past governments has precedent in the U.S. After a class action lawsuit accused the Department of Agriculture of anti-Black discrimination, an extensive investigation confirmed that disaster relief aid was systematically withheld from Black farmers but not white farmers during the 1980s and 1990s (Woods 2013). In 2010, President Barack Obama finalized legislation that entitles Black farmers or their descendants to up to $250,000 if they were denied relevant aid in the past.

Affirmative action, while less targeted, seeks to increase diversity and expand opportunities for underrepresented groups. However, its effectiveness in addressing past harm may be limited if the primary beneficiaries are less directly impacted by historical discrimination. Sociologists have shown that the more selective a college is, the less likely its Black students are to be descendants of the enslaved (Massey et al. 2007). Often, selective colleges choose to admit Black students from abroad, not Black American students.

Another promising approach includes policies that provide broad-based support to disadvantaged communities, like the Child Tax Credit reform that removed working requirements. By providing support regardless of employment status, this policy helps mitigate the compounding effects of historical injustices on economically disadvantaged groups.

Any policymaker interested in creating a more equitable society must acknowledge and address the impact of past discrimination. Failing to do so risks perpetuating systemic discrimination and exacerbating inequalities, harming marginalized communities, and undermining the overall social and economic well-being of the nation.

Targeted policies that directly address the specific harms of historical injustices are essential for greater equity. However, broad policies that support disadvantaged communities also play a crucial role in combating the lingering effects of past discrimination. Going forward, policymakers must prioritize comprehensive strategies that effectively address the complex and far-reaching consequences of historical injustices, ensuring all members of society have an equal opportunity to thrive.

About the Authors

Lukas Althoff is a Postdoctoral Fellow at SIEPR. He joins Stanford’s Department of Economics as an Assistant Professor in 2025. His work focuses on the causes and consequences of inequality using tools from applied microeconomics and economic history.

Aaronson, D., & Mazumder, B. (2011). The Impact of Rosenwald Schools on Black Achievement. Journal of Political Economy, 119(5), 821-888.

Ali, O. (2023). The Impact of Federal Housing Policies on Racial Inequality: The Case of the Federal Housing Administration. Working Paper.

Althoff, L., & Reichardt, H. (2024). Jim Crow and Black Economic Progress after Slavery. Working Paper.

Baker, R. S. (2022). The Historical Racial Regime and Racial Inequality in Poverty in the American South. American Journal of Sociology, 127.

Bohren, J. A., Hull, P., & Imas, A. (2023). Systemic Discrimination: Theory and Measurement. Working Paper.

Cohen, L. (2004). A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America. Vintage Books.

Fishback, P. V., Rose, J., Snowden, K. A., & Storrs, T. (2021). New Evidence on Redlining by Federal Housing Programs in the 1930s (NBER Working Paper No. 29244).

Hynsjö, D. M., & Perdoni, L. (2024). Mapping Out Institutional Discrimination: The Economic Effects of Federal "Redlining". Working Paper.

Katznelson, I. (2006). When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Massey, D. S., Mooney, M., Torres, K. C., & Charles, C. Z. (2007). Black Immigrants and Black Natives Attending Selective Colleges and Universities in the United States. American Journal of Education, 113(2), 243-271.

Parolin, Z., Collyer, S., & Curran, M. A. (2022). Absence of Monthly Child Tax Credit Leads to 3.7 Million More Children in Poverty in January 2022. Poverty and Social Policy Brief, 6(2). Columbia University Center on Poverty and Social Policy.

Turner, S., & Bound, J. (2003). Closing the Gap or Widening the Divide: The Effects of the G.I. Bill and World War II on the Educational Outcomes of Black Americans. The Journal of Economic History, 63(1), 145-177.

Woods, L. L., II. (2013). Almost "No Negro Veteran … Could Get a Loan": African Americans, the GI Bill, and the NAACP Campaign Against Residential Segregation, 1917–1960. The Journal of African American History, 98(3), 392-417.

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The Anomaly of Economic Growth

A new book examines the history of the phenomenon—and says how it can be sustained.

Growth: A History and a Reckoning , by Daniel Susskind (Belknap Press, 304 pp., $29.95)

“Once you start thinking about growth,” the late economist Robert Lucas said, “it’s hard to think about anything else.” For economists, maybe. For the rest of us, economic growth has generally been an afterthought, even as it provides much that we take for granted, from higher living standards to more leisure time. Even our access to cheap light after dark, Daniel Susskind reminds us in Growth: A History and a Reckoning , ranks among “the great historical luxuries.” Economic growth has shaped our expectations so much that we now select our presidents by asking: “Am I better off now than I was four years ago?”

And yet, we’re still confused about growth. Historians and economists disagree about what causes it. Policymakers disagree about how to get more of it. And, thanks to the emergence of climate doomsters, some wonder whether we should have it at all. Turns out that it’s as hard to think about growth as it is not to think about it.

Thus, Susskind deserves thanks for providing a concise and informative study of the idea, its past, and its potential future. A professor at King’s College, London, he is both a reliable guide to economists’ often arcane arguments about growth and a clear commentator on their significance. His book considers the debates over growth’s causes, its recent elevation as a priority for governments, policies for promoting it, and rising concerns about its downsides.

One reason for so much disagreement about the causes and consequences of economic growth, Susskind shows, is that it’s such a new phenomenon. Sustained economic growth began only with the Industrial Revolution; everything before that he calls the “Long Stagnation.” Searching for the cause of economic growth can feel futile. Still, Susskind makes a compelling case that the secret to it is “the cultural shift that propelled people toward the pursuit of useful ideas in the eighteenth century,” together with the new technologies those ideas inspired. No other cause seems able to explain why the Industrial Revolution happened when and where it did.

While humans have always wanted more stuff, Susskind shows how historically singular it is for policymakers, politicians, and the public to value economic expansion so highly. Angela Merkel knew her audience would get it when she said, “We need three things above all. First: growth. Second: growth. And third: growth.” But her words would have baffled people throughout most of history. We accept the pursuit of growth as a given, Susskind suggests, partly because it offers an easy fix for political disagreements: “by pursuing growth, you could sidestep many of the practical tradeoffs in political life.” When economic indicators point up and everyone has more money in the bank, it’s much easier to tolerate other problems.

This is one reason, Susskind argues, why boosting growth and escaping the “secular stagnation” of recent decades is so necessary. To that end, he offers a succinct agenda focused on developing new ideas through intellectual property reform, high-skilled immigration, major investments in R&D, and support for technological innovation. Here, Susskind astutely emphasizes our real, albeit partial, control over the direction of technological development: “the incentives that drive people to develop some technologies and abandon others are not fixed features of life.” Rather, they “can be constructed and maintained” through policies. He persuasively rebuts the degrowth movement, which basically wants to tank the economy to save the rainforests. On the contrary, Susskind shows, growth increasingly complements environmental preservation and improvement.

A key question that Susskind does not ask is whether one country’s growth can conflict with another’s. His policy recommendations are general enough to apply to any developed nation—but what happens when growth goals clash with political imperatives? Susskind notes the Cold War’s “growthmanship” between the U.S. and Soviet Union but leaves unaddressed the rise of China as an authoritarian economic powerhouse.

Susskind is aware of other tradeoffs, though, and he avoids the smugness to which growth’s boosters often succumb (“Medieval peasants would have killed for your air fryer, so quit complaining!”). Instead, he calls attention to the “growth dilemma”—a pull toward more growth because of its promise versus an equally strong pull toward less growth on account of its costs. Examples he offers include automation-induced unemployment, economic inequality, and the erosion of local communities. Though Susskind acknowledges the existence of genuine tradeoffs, he argues plausibly that our capacity to direct technological change, as opposed simply to submitting to it, enables us to soften these tradeoffs, if not wholly eliminate them.

While Growth covers an impressive range of perspectives and issues, Susskind may have missed the ultimate conflict: economic expansion versus population degrowth. For the last few centuries, a rising economy and population have seemed to be mutually reinforcing; but no more. Instead, we face what economist Philip Pilkington calls “capitalism’s overlooked contradiction.” Growth creates wealth, but wealth reduces birth rates—a change that, over time, slows growth. In a wealthier world, there could be fewer and fewer people to generate the new ideas that Susskind puts at the center of his theory, and geriatric societies are unlikely to have the energy to implement what ideas remain.

Other than mentioning the “folly of quasi-Malthusian attempts to influence fertility,” Susskind is silent on this problem. South Korea, Italy, and other nations are struggling with depopulation already. The rest of the developed world will face it soon, potentially menacing the abundance that has now shaped life for generations. We may, with all respect to Robert Lucas, have to start thinking about not just economic growth, but population growth as well.

Robert Bellafiore Jr. is research manager at the Foundation for American Innovation.

Photo: imaginima / E+ via Getty Images

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Research in Economic History: Volume 37

Table of contents, when the race between education and technology goes backward: the postbellum decline of white school attendance in the southern us.

This study examines a sharp decline of school attendance among white children in the Southern US after the Civil War. According to Census data, the school-attendance rate among whites in the Confederate states declined by almost half from 1860 to 1870, whereas the rate in Northern states was approximately stable. This shock left the South approximately three decades behind its antebellum trend. We account for little of this drop with household variables plausibly affected by the War. However, a select few county-level variables (notably the drop in wealth) explains around half of the decline, which suggests a systemic explanation. We adopt a model-based approach to decomposing the decline in schooling into demand versus supply factors. On the supply side, the region saw a decline in wealth and public resources, but we observe a stable relationship between time in school and literacy or adult occupation, which is not consistent with a contracting constraint on school quantity or quality. Nevertheless, further research is required to determine how much the contraction in school access affected attendance. On the demand-side, we present suggestive evidence of a decline in the return to school (measured by the relative wage of engineers to laborers). Relatedly, we see a “brain drain”: in longitudinally linked census samples, educated Southerners were more likely to migrate out of the South after the War.

The Parliamentary Subsidy on Knights' Fees and Incomes of 1431: A Study on the Fiscal Administration of an Abortive English Tax Experiment

The experimental parliamentary subsidy on knights' fees and freehold incomes from lands and rents of 1431 was the only English direct lay tax of the Middle Ages which broke down. As such, this subsidy has a clear historiographical significance, yet previous scholars have tended to overlook it on the grounds that parliament's annulment act of 1432 mandated the destruction of all fiscal administrative evidence. Many county assessments from 1431–1432 do, however, survive and are examined for the first time in this article as part of a detailed assessment of the fiscal and administrative context of the knights' fees and incomes tax. This impost constituted a royal response to excess expenditures associated with Henry VI's “Coronation Expedition” of 1429–1431, the scale of which marked a decisive break from the fiscal-military strategy of the 1420s. Widespread confusion regarding whether taxpayers ought to pay the feudal or the non-feudal component of the 1431 subsidy characterized its botched administration. Industrial scale under-assessment, moreover, emerged as a serious problem. Officials' attempts to provide a measure of fiscal compensation by unlawfully double-assessing many taxpayers served to increase administrative confusion and resulted in parliament's annulment act of 1432. This had serious consequences for the crown's finances, since the regime was saddled with budgetary and debt problems which would ultimately undermine the solvency of the Lancastrian state.

Early Fertility Decline in the United States: Tests of Alternative Hypotheses Using New Complete-Count Census Microdata and Enhanced County-Level Data

The US fertility transition in the nineteenth century is unusual. Not only did it start from a very high fertility level and very early in the nation’s development, but it also took place long before the nation’s mortality transition, industrialization, and urbanization. This paper assembles new county-level, household-level, and individual-level data, including new complete-count IPUMS microdata databases of the 1830–1880 censuses, to evaluate different theories for the nineteenth-century American fertility transition. We construct cross-sectional models of net fertility for currently-married white couples in census years 1830–1880 and test the results with a subset of couples linked between the 1850–1860, 1860–1870, and 1870–1880 censuses. We find evidence of marital fertility control consistent with hypotheses as early as 1830. The results indicate support for several different but complementary theories of the early US fertility decline, including the land availability, conventional structuralist, ideational, child demand/quality-quantity tradeoff, and life cycle savings theories.

Private Banking and Financial Networks in the Crown of Aragon during the Fourteenth Century

This chapter deals with the development of banking in the Crown of Aragon from the end of the thirteenth century through the establishment of money changers, which followed similar patterns as in other Western European territories. It starts with a review of existing literature and follows with an explanation on the different banking services provided by money changers and the specific legal framework that supported such activities. It then examines the geographical distribution of private banks in cities and towns within the domains of the kings of Aragon, as well as their evolution throughout the fourteenth century. After that, it offers an analysis of the most common professional profiles among these bankers and financers. Finally, drawing on a heterogeneous pool of unpublished data, it seeks to shed light on the diversity of investors and clients of these establishments, a crucial proof of their role in integrated financial markets.

Pieter Stadnitski Sharpens the Axe: A Revolutionary Research Report on American Sovereign Finance, 1787

One of the most important, least-known documents of the American Revolution was a 25-page pamphlet published in Amsterdam early in 1787: An Explanatory Message Concerning the Funds by Pieter Stadnitski. 1 Within a year of its publication Peter Stadnitski's Message quite literally revolutionized American sovereign finance. My paper will summarize in detail the report's content and analyze its arguments in light of Dutch archival materials including deeds, newspaper reports, and letters, as well as congressional records from American sources. It will describe what Dutch investors knew (and did not know) of the state of American public finance and American political landscape, and the Dutch financial community's view of the American future. Its essential argument is that thanks initially to Stadnitski's persuasive case and ultimately to the success of the trusts he pioneered, Dutch investment specialists came to see the American republic as a safe haven at a time that Dutch Republic's own future seemed increasingly perilous. If their dream of achieving a new Golden Age through trade and investment with the new nation ultimately proved illusory, the effects of Dutch capital in creating financial stability for the United States government and igniting the first peacetime economic expansion in American history were revolutionary indeed.

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• Susan Wolcott

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Economic Sovereignty in South Africa, African Economic History

We are pleased to announce the publication of an African Economic History special issue on: Economic Sovereignty in South Africa. Edited by Ndumiso Dladla and Anjuli Webster, and featuring CHR research affiliate Bongani Ndlovu.

This issue brings together new research from historians, legal scholars, and philosophers interested in analyzing the historical and economic dimensions of white supremacy, and the afterlives of empire and colonialism in Southern Africa.

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ECON100 or ECON110

This paper analyses: economic forces that shape the internal spatial structure of urban areas and systems as a whole, economic basis of patterns of regional growth and development and rationale and effectiveness of regional policies followed by selected countries. Offered in alternate years.

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