Questions tagged [economic-history]
Economic history is the study of past economies and economic events.
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Why would bank runs lead to a decrease of the total quantity of money supply M1?
It‘s specifically about the German banking crisis of 1931. I get how the banks increasing their reserves and cutting their loans (starting 1930) would cause money contraction (at least of M1). Doesn‘t ...
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Is Steve Forbes factually correct when he says that all of our economics problems are made worse by leaving the gold standard?
When I started reading Steve Forbes book Inflation I was surprised by his confidence in making statements about the impact of leaving the gold standard.
The book is clearly written and goes against ...
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Would Bretton-Woods capital controls have prevented the export-based industrialization of China and the deindustrialization of the West?
I sometimes hear this in a certain kind of political discourse, namely that in the "good old days" of Bretton-Woods capital controls were a thing (I don't dispute this) and that consequently ...
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Did countries ever default against Federal Reserve's swap line?
Did foreign countries ever default against Fed's swap line or Foreign and International Monetary Authorities ? Or is it technically possible? I guess they will lose their collateral, and it's a big ...
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Why is the barter economy predating money taught when it never existed?
As described here, and from what I remember from economics class (this may sound anecdotal, but I think it's common knowledge, correct me if I'm wrong), a barter economy is said to predate money. But ...
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Why are subscriptions to the World Bank's IBRD measured in 1944 US dollars? How is this calculated?
Several official documents published by the World Bank's 'International Bank For Reconstruction and Development' (IBRD), such as https://pubdocs.worldbank.org/en/795101541106471736/...
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Is there a source for historical GDP by sector composition in the 20th century?
I've been looking for historical data on GDP for various countries, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_(PPP) has been helpful in this sense; however I'm interested in ...
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Why did Hungary joining the E.U. cause oil prices fall to be only marginally higher than they were in Ukraine?
Related cross-site: Were schoolteachers really paid substantially less than $45 per month in 1990s Ukraine?
This particular question is arguably on-topic on Lit.SE and History.SE as well, but I'd like ...
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Was pre-industrial economy more likely to have overproduction or shortage problem. How large would be the gap
I read in somewhere that the per capita annual production of cast iron in the roman empire was on par with per capita annual consumption of cast iron in 15th century England. Assume this is accurate, ...
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Why was the massive outflow of silver before the first Opium War so bad for the British Empire?
TLDR
I am a person without any significant knowledge of economics, so even though I have (I suspect) some partial answers, I need a better understanding of these.
Background and question
In accounts ...
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How did empires make wealth out of empire-colony trade?
It is commonly discussed that one way the empires of 16-18th would receive wealth from colonies is:
Get raw materials from a colony
Transport them to the empire
Make more sophisticated products out ...
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Is there any economic history book on how western economy coped with the fall of roman empire?
I recently finished Tamin's The Roman Market Economy. The book describes how Roman Republic and later Roman Empire created an integrated and at the time developed European economy. I enjoyed it a lot, ...
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Is there any graph that shows how the gold and silver content decreased in roman coins?
I am looking for a graph of at least a table with data that would allow me to make a graph, showing how the gold/silver content was slowly removed from roman coins due to debasement of the currency.
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What happens to the currency of a war winner?
Are there examples in history that teach what happens to the currency of a war winner? Is any of this knowledge transferrable to the current situation, with either Ukraine or Russia winning the war?
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What factors influence whether an invention is not patented?
Various inventions that have become well-known were never patented, including matches, emoticons, and the magnetic strip. Other noteworthy examples include the polio vaccine (Jonas Salk), monoclonal ...
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Book recommendation about the causes of the great depression
Yesterday's Nobel prize was awarded to three economists focusing on banking, and Ben Bernanke, at least, did, as far as I know, some groundbreaking research on the causes of the great depression.
I ...
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How did the first money owners get their money?
If certain people were the first money owners, then how did they get their money?
How could someone have paid the first money owners with money, if nobody before the first money owners had any money?
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New financing instruments as covert leverage?
Back when the Federal Reserve intervened in the commercial paper market in the 1970s, corporates essentially woke up the next morning and found they had two back-stopped modes of financing: their own ...
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"Technological breakthrough changes social-economic relations" - how this Marxian thesis is perceived in orthodox economy and political economy?
This article https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/newproposals/article/view/2017 from Neo-Marxian peer-reviewed journal applies the Marxian thesis "technological breakthrough changes social-...
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Post WWI - Peace Conference flow of capital
I'm researching a bit into how countries went about servicing their debt obligations, which were quite high after the major spending during wartime. Liaquat Ahamed notes:
As the Peace Conference was ...
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How do I build a synthetic measure of economic activity for linear regression?
I'm trying to estimate the effects of WW2 on the economy using historical data for cities.
The regression is pretty simple:
...
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Is there any good source that explains Chiense early experiment with paper money?
Historically China adopted paper money very early but during Ming Dynasty paper money was replaced by silver coins.
I would like to know why, is there any authoritative source that looks at this issue?...
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What's the highest percentage of output any country spent on its military?
I was surprised that in 1941:
American military spending accounted for 2 per cent of it's national output. Compared to Japan's 70 per cent.
70% seems incredibly high, especially given people still ...
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Why did Germany not suffer from Great Inflation in the 1970s/80s?
Comparing the inflation rate of some of the industrial countries around 1975 (Great Inflation) in between the two oil shocks of 1973 and 1979/80, it seems odd that most countries' inflation rate was ...
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Why people bought stocks in open outcry?
The human nature is to hide business strategy from business rivals, so how come stock exchange brokers brokers bought and sold shareholdings in open outcry directly in front of their rivals?
This is ...
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What were the historical theories of price formation before demand-supply relationship was well understood?
Markets have existed for thousands of years. People must had ideas about where prices came from.
Before the clear formulation of demand/supply-based theory of prices, what were the historical theories ...
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Was there any currency backed by other metals than gold, silver or copper?
Was any other metal than gold, silver or copper ever in history used to back a currency?
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Did free markets cause the industrial revolution?
I want to know the justification for the posture that "free trade/liberalism caused the industrial revolution".
I would like to get arguments, books and video conferences about it.
I was ...
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Is there research on the level of individuals regarding the origins of hyperinflation? [closed]
I am interested in inflation, specifically hyperinflation. Can anybody point me to research (papers, books) done on the individual origins and mechanisms at work at the very beginning of ...
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What are some good Phd or research programs for Economic History / Economic Thought History?
Please correct me if I am wrong, but my impression is that most "mainstream" economics programs are now focusing less and less on economic thought history. So, in order to do research on ...
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How does the size of the largest cryptocurrency compare to the largest traditional currency?
'Money' has evolved throughout economic history, and has included moving from:
barter economies (i.e. no 'Money' - simple trading of final goods/services)
commodity money - money whose intrinsic ...
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What happened to the dollar in Nov 1978?
Arthur Burns (1979):
"Benign neglect" of the external value of the dollar came to an end dramatically, and I would hope irrevocably, in November 1978.
What event(s) of Nov 1978 is Arthur ...
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Have Bernanke, Geithner, Paulson, or the Fed ever responded to Laurence Ball's accusations about Lehman?
Ben Bernanke, Hank Paulson, and Timothy Geithner have repeatedly stated that they wanted to save Lehman Brothers but couldn't do so legally because Lehman didn't have enough collateral.
Laurence Ball ...
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Could you recommend literature on the economy of ancient rome?
As the title states, I am looking for some sources on the economy of ancient Rome. To be more precise, I am interested mainly in the republican era (509BC - 27BC). Thanks.
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The role of Germany's economic growth in the outbreak of the Great War
This Wikipedia article shows that UK's economy was bigger than Germany's economy until 1900, but after 1910, Germany's GDP overtook UK and it became the first European economy. Imperialism is ...
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Bank Charter Act of 1844 vs banking landscape 2021 - regulatory capture or policy obsolescence?
A driving motivation for the Bank Charter Act of 1844 was to institutionalize/centralize seignorage and impose limits on how much influence commercial banks have in terms of money creation (along m4 ...
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Why is the rate of profit not important?
I've been taking some time to read up on the history of economic thought and am wondering why the rate of profit (which was a measure heavily discussed up to the 1970s) seems to disappear out of ...
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What are the economic drivers of urbanisation?
It is regularly argued that urbanisation drives economic growth (e.g. here).
I wonder which are the drivers that lead to urbanisation in the first place?
I believe the historical case of the ...
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Is there any economic explanation why industrialization first occured in Britain?
I am asking this question because historians often consider pre-industrialization Britain to be a poor and backward country relative to other European powers/states such as Spain, France, Italian city-...
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Are there any books on economy of the medieval England?
I would like to learn more about how the medieval economy in the UK worked. Are there any economists that research medieval society in the UK? Are there some good books on this?
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Were there any contemporary economists (or other observers) who considered the 1920s a "New Era" of greater growth and stability?
Eichengreen (2015, Hall of Mirrors):
In the 1920s it was said that the world had entered a “New Era” of economic stability with the establishment of the Federal Reserve System and independent central ...
user23101
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How did the silver standard "insulate" China from the beginning of the Great Depression (1929-1931)
There is a segment from this article that I want to unpack:
The Great Depression was a global crisis—almost. Every significant
economy was devastated, with one notable exception: China. The reason
...
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What determines whether slavery is economically efficient in industrialized/modern era economies?
Various forms of slavery were nearly universal before the industrial revolution. After industrialization, it would naively seem forced labor would continue to be widespread, as there is no way to ...
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The Dumping Argument and Trusts
I have often heard the following argument against the antimonopoly/anticollusion law:
Whenever the entrepreneurs decide to enter into "illegal" collaboration, each one has an opportunity to ...
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Are there historical cases of country A printing the currency of country B for the main purpose of economic warfare?
I recently read in a news article that a large amount of Libyan banknotes printed in Russia were seized in Malta following an order coming from the USA. Both Russia and the USA have geostrategic ...
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How are historic economic statistics calculated?
Sources like Our World in Data can have statistics that date back hundreds of years. Specifically, the Our World in Data source has a graph of GDP Per Capita in England dating all the way back 1270. ...
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In today's money, what was the value of a 1492 Spanish maravedí?
Satava (2007) estimates that the costs of Columbus's 1492 voyage was 1,765,734 maravedís.
In today's money, what was the value of a 1492 Spanish maravedí?
user23102
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Was Adam Smith correct about the relative marginal productivities of capital in agriculture, manufacturing, and trade?
Adam Smith (1776):
No equal capital puts into motion a greater quantity of productive labour than that of the farmer.
After agriculture, the capital employed in manufactures puts into motion the ...
user23102
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Which metrics best characterise 'socialist' and 'capitalist' economies?
I am interested in finding some metrics that capture how 'socialist' or 'capitalist' a country was throughout modern history, and to include these alongside those in the gapminder dataset, to explore ...
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How long into the past can we trace the effect of institutions?
In one of my courses we recently went through several institutional economic papers (The colonial origins of comparative development, The Slave Trade and the Origins of Mistrust in Africa, The Long-...
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