Syllabus
Detailed course schedule
The course takes places during the 12 weeks of the Fall Semester. After the 3rd week, the course is divided into a lecture (1.5h/week) and a paper seminar part (1.5h/week). The course will follow the following schedule:
Week #1: Overview of the course
ü Introduction, outline of the course and course requirements
ü Short presentation of research papers for paper assignments
ü Allocation procedure of paper assignments
Week #2: (Non-technical) Introduction to quantitative methods in economic history
ü Allocation of research paper assignments
ü Quantitative methods in economic history: DiD, IV, (fuzzy) RDD, SCM
Week #3: From the Stone Age to early development
ü Growth since the year AD 1: From stagnation to the “sustainable” economic growth
ü The Malthusian poverty trap
ü The four horsemen of riches
ü The emergence of the European Marriage Pattern (EMP) and the fertility transition
Paper Seminar on “Stone Age economics”:
(A1) Matranga, A. (2019): “The Ant and the Grasshopper: Seasonality and the Invention of Agriculture”, Working Paper Chapman University. (Level: medium)
(A2) Izdebski, A., Słoczyński, T., Bonnier, A., Koloch, G., and K. Kouli (2020): “Landscape Change and Trade in Ancient Greece: Evidence from Pollen Data”, The Economic Journal (forthcoming). (Level: easy)
(A3) Barjamovic, G., Chaney, T., Coşar, K., and A. Hortaçsu (2019): “Trade, Merchants, and the Lost Cities of the Bronze Age”, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 134 (3), 1455–1503. (Level: difficult)
Week #4: The Industrial Revolution
ü Theories on the Industrial Revolution: “Enlightenment” versus relative factor prices
ü The spread of the industrial revolution: The cases of Germany, France and Russia
Paper Seminar on early development before the IR:
(B1) Ogilvie, S. (2014): “The Economics of Guilds”, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 28(4), 169–192. (Level: easy)
(B2) Dittmar, J. E. (2011): “Information Technology and Economic Change: The Impact of the Printing Press”, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 126(3), 1133–1172. (Level: medium-difficult)
(B3) Derenoncourt, E. (2019): “Atlantic Slavery's Impact on European and British Economic Development”, Working Paper UC Berkeley. (Level: medium)
Week #5: Cultural Economics
ü Cultural economics: How social trust relates to economic prosperity – An example
ü Stylized facts about cultural differences in the European Union
ü The origin of cultural differences: Nature, economic conditions and institutions
Paper Seminar on the Industrial Revolution:
(C1) Markevich, A., and E. Zhuravskaya (2018): “The Economic Effects of the Abolition of Serfdom: Evidence from the Russian Empire”, American Economic Review, 108(4-5), 1074–1117. (Level: medium-difficult)
(C2) Heblich, S., and A. Trew (2019): “Banking and Industrialization”, Journal of the European Economic Association 17(6), 1753–1796. (Level: medium-difficult)
(C3) de Pleijt, A., Nuvolari, A., and J. Weisdorf (2020): “Human Capital Formation During the First Industrial Revolution: Evidence from the use of Steam Engines”, Journal of the European Economic Association, 18(2), 829–889. (Level: medium)
Week #6: The economics of wars and its consequences
ü Economic disintegration, coordination failure and the role of new borders
ü War debt, reparation and four big hyperinflations in CEE and Germany
ü The end of hyperinflations: Fundamentals versus expectations
Paper Seminar on the shadow of wars:
(D1) Juhász, R. (2018): “Temporary Protection and Technology Adoption: Evidence from the Napoleonic Blockade”, American Economic Review, 108(11), 3339–3376. (Level: medium-difficult)
(D2) Correia, S., Luck, S., and E. Verner (2020): “Pandemics Depress the Economy, Public Health Interventions Do Not: Evidence from the 1918 Flu”, Working Paper MIT. (Level: medium)
(D3) Becker, S. O., Boeckh, K., Hainz, C., and L. Woessmann (2016): “The Empire Is Dead, Long Live the Empire! Long-Run Persistence of Trust and Corruption in the Bureaucracy”, Economic Journal 126(590), 40–74. (Level: medium)
Week #7: The Great Depression in the USA and Europe
ü The Great Depression in the USA: From the roaring twenties to the economic downturn
ü Recovery in the US: Fundamentals versus expectations
ü Europe: Similar but different
ü Golden fetters: The role of the Gold Standard for European recovery
Paper Seminar on the Great Depression:
(E1) Lee, J., and F. Mezzanotti (2017): “Bank Distress and Manufacturing: Evidence from the Great Depression”, Working Paper, Northwestern University. (Level: medium-difficult)
(E2) Hausman, J. K., Rhode, P. W., and J. F. Wieland (2019): “Recovery from the Great Depression: The Farm Channel in Spring 1933”, American Economic Review, 109(2), 427–472. (Level: medium-difficult)
(E3) Doerr, S., Gissler, S., Peydró, J.L., and H.-J. Voth (2020): “From Finance to Fascism, Working Paper”, University of Zurich. (Level: medium-difficult)
Week #8: The economics of totalitarian regimes – Nazi Germany and the USSR
ü Nazi Germany: “Keynesian” economic policy or other drivers of economic success
ü USSR: The great experiment
ü Partial success and failure of planning economies
Paper Seminar on totalitarian regimes:
(F1) Voigtländer, N., and H-J. Voth (2012): “Persecution Perpetuated: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Semitic Violence in Nazi Germany”, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 127, 1339–1392. (Level: medium)
(F2) Mohr, C. (2019): “Carrots and Sticks: Targeting the Opposition in an Autocratic Regime”, Working Paper, LMU Munich. (Level: medium-difficult)
(F3) Suesse, M. (2018): “Breaking the Unbreakable Union: Nationalism, Disintegration and the Soviet Economic Collapse”, The Economic Journal, 128 (615), 2933–2967. (Level: medium)
Week #9: Regional economics in post-WWII – Lessons from exogenous shocks
ü Liberation and occupation of Europe after WWII – Experimental settings for quantitative economic history
ü Regional economics: Nature versus man-made regional economic inequality
ü Examples: Liberation and occupation of Europe by the Allies, market access
ü Political economy: Political extremism
Paper Seminar on ethnic cleansing in CEE:
(G1) Testa, P. A. (2020), “The Economic Legacy of Expulsion: Lessons from Postwar Czechoslovakia”, The Economic Journal (forthcoming). (Level: medium)
(G2) Becker, S. O., Grosfeld, I., Grosjean, P., Voigtländer, N., and E. Zhuravskaya (2020): “Forced Migration and Human Capital: Evidence from post-WWII Population Transfers”, American Economic Review 110(5), 1430–1463. (Level: medium-difficult)
(G3) Grossmann, J., Jurajda, S., and F. Roesel (2020): “Forced Migration, Stayers, and New Societies: Evidence from Ethnic Cleansing in Czechoslovakia”, Working Paper/mimeo, Dresden/Prague. (Level: medium)
Week #10: Economic growth and bloc integration in the East and West
ü Economic miracle in the East and West
ü Bloc integration in the West: From EG-6 to the European Union
ü Bloc integration in the East: COMECON and the lack of price signals
Paper Seminar on post-WWII economic growth:
(H1) Ochsner, C. (2020): “Dismantled once, Diverged forever? A Quasi-natural Experiment of Red Army’s Misdeeds in post-WWII Europe”, ifo Working Paper No. 240 (revised). (Level: medium)
(H2) Bianchi, N., and M. Giorcelli (2018): “Reconstruction Aid, Public Infrastructure, and Economic Development: The Case of the Marshall Plan in Italy”, Working Paper, UCLA. (Level: medium-difficult)
(H3) Glitz, A., and E. Meyersson (2020): “Industrial Espionage and Productivity”, American Economic Review, 110 (4), 1055–1103. (Level: difficult)
Week #11: Monetary integration – From Bretton Woods to the Euro
ü Bretton Woods: From initial success to imbalances
ü European monetary integration: From partial failures to the Euro
ü The Euro in the long-run
Paper Seminar on the economic transition after 1990:
(I1) Abadie, A., Diamond, A., and J. Hainmueller (2015): “Comparative Politics and the Synthetic Control Method”, American Journal of Political Science, 59(2), 4
Annotation
General course motivation
We apparently live in economic turbulent times: The COVID-19 pandemic crushes the economy; the rise of China fosters deindustrialization in developed countries; the financial crisis in 2008 is still prolonging and visible in ongoing unconventional monetary policy measures; and technological change fosters the skill-premium and somewhat translates into radical political movements. However, these present-day challenges are not new: The Spanish flu in 1918/1919 provides lessons on the economic consequences of pandemics, the Great Depression in the early 1930s show some parallels to the crisis in 2008 but led to different policy measures; and technological change are shaping the world at least since the Industrial Revolution.
The lecture “Economic History – From the Stone Age to the Euro” aims at deepening our understanding of past economic shocks and looks at long-run economic development by combining stylized facts, theoretical concepts and empirical findings. We will classify current events, link it to similar occurrences in the past and discuss how unique present-day obstacles are in a historical context. We look at economic shocks and their respective policy measures, zoom into the situation in Central and Eastern Europe – and into the Czech Lands in particular – and ask whether economic history may help to achieve appropriate policy measures for challenges in the present day.
The lecture follows two approaches to learn more about economics in general and economic history in particular. On the one hand, a long-term perspective on the evolution of socio-economic figures can help to understand changes and obstacles today. On the other hand, history provides so-called quasi-experimental shocks to test theoretical concepts empirically. Both approaches of doing economic history deepen our understanding of economics. Thereby, the lecture bases on a broader understanding of economics. Despite classical economic measures like GDP, inflation or population growth, we will also discuss so-called soft economic variables such as norms, culture, trust and social capital. These soft economic variables are important drivers of economic growth, cooperation and economic success.