Questions tagged [economic-history]
Economic history is the study of past economies and economic events.
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How could the Roman sestertii/sesterces be converted into modern terms (say 2017 US$)?
Of course, the value of the sesterti must itself have fluctuated over the centuries it was in use. And so if I must narrow it down, I am particularly interested in its value during
the time of ...
user18
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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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Effects of wartime rationing on British life expectancy?
From The Economist (23 May 2020):
In Britain during the 1940s life expectancy shot up by seven years, thanks to a wartime rationing system that ensured everyone had nourishing (if dull) food.
I ...
user28052
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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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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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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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According to North, Wallis, and Weingast (NWW), which states/societies have successfully made the transition to open access?
Weingast (2016) writes:
The NWW framework redefines the process of economic and political development as the transition from a limited access order to an open access order. The transition is a ...
user28052
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Greek mathematics' application in the early economic theories
I am writing about the development of mathematics in the Ancient Greece as an assigment and I have to include its relation with economics. However, I lack of sources for this topic and I only found ...
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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 ...
user18
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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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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 ...
user32001
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List of important business and economic news events between 1850 and 1930?
I'm collecting data on important business and economic news dates in the late 19th to early 20th century. The only list I found is this: https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/news-wires-white-papers-...
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How did the purported 2008 decoupling of emerging markets pan out?
One opinion voiced (in The Economist) around the 2008 recession was that:
Decoupling does not mean that an American recession will have no impact on developing countries. That would be daft. The ...
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Historically has the "decoupling" of world trade from GDP not lead to (or deepened) a recession?
The ECB speaks (somewhat euphemistically, in my opinion) of a "decoupling" of world trade from "activity" (i.e. GDP) in Q1 2019:
Historically, has it been the case that such a "decoupling" can last, ...
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How long did it take before the Hawley–Smoot Tariffs reached their peak effect on US growth?
I understand that this may still be a contentious issue, but are there some estimates how long it took before the Hawley–Smoot Tariffs impacted US growth significantly and/or how long it took for them ...
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What are some great economic reforms from the Middle Ages / the Ancient History?
Is there any great economic structural reforms, which date back to the Middle Ages or to the Ancient times?
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Can sanctions spur economic reforms?
Is there any evidence throughout history that economic and financial sanctions helped sped up structural reforms, particularly in countries whose economies were previously dependent on natural ...
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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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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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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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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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Research and development data before 1970 for United States
I'm looking for expenditure of research and development data per sector or averaged across all sectors from the United States prior to 1970 either in absolute values or in percentage of GDP.
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What were the limits of trade and exchange in the Soviet Union? What about other communist countries?
I'm particularly wondering about what implications the abolition of private property had for families. Since private property was to be abolished, I assume houses were not legally allowed to be traded ...
