A reply from the Boards of the Italian Associations of Economic History (SISE) and the History of Economic Thought (AISPE) To: Profs. Robert C. Allen, Stephen Broadberry, Gregory Clark, Nicholas Crafts, Jane Humphries, Deirdre McCloskey, Joel Mokyr, Douglass North, Kevin O’Rourke, Leandro Prados de la Escosura, Jan Luiten Van Zanden, and Jeffrey G. WilliamsonApril 7, 2014Re: […]
Economic history in Italy: A letter to the Minister of University and Scientific Research
Re: Abilitazione Scientifica Nazionale 2012, Storia Economica (13 C/1) Dear Prime Minister, dear Minister, We would like to express our concern about the results of the National Scientific Qualification (Abilitazione Scientifica Nazionale) in Economic History (13 C/1). In particular, we are puzzled by the failure of a number of applicants with an outstanding track record […]
NEW EHES Working paper on “Debt Dilution in 1920s America: Lighting the Fuse of a Mortgage Crisis”
Much like the recent crisis, the U.S. Great Depression saw serious and widespread troubles among banks. Also like the recent crisis, the U.S. Great Depression was preceded by a large nationwide boom in real estate, peaking in 1926. Unlike in the current crisis, however, the interwar link – if any – between the real estate […]
NEW EHES Working paper: “Market potential estimates in history: a survey of methods and an application to Spain, 1867-1930”
The distribution of economic activity in Spain by night. New Economic Geography (NEG) stresses the role of accessibility as an explanatory factor of the spatial distribution of economic activity. According to this theoretical framework, when transport costs decline, production (mainly that characterised by increasing returns and imperfect competition) will tend to agglomerate in locations with a […]
NEW EHES Working paper: How did the capital market evaluate Germany’s prospects for winning World War I?
Evidence from the Amsterdam market for government bonds Tobias Jopp is Akademischer Rat (post-doc) at Universität Regensburg Economic historians have increasingly used market prices for a country’s sovereign debt to learn more about the importance, or unimportance, of special events seen through the lens of contemporaries. Such “special events” typically include war, political turmoil, and economic crisis. Especially the American […]
NEW EHES Working Paper about Bank Deregulation, Competition and Economic Growth
Bank Deregulation, Competition and Economic Growth: The US Free Banking Experience Philipp Ager, assistantprofessor at University ofSouthern Denmark What is the optimal level of bank competition? New research by Philipp Ager and Fabrizio Spargoli sheds light on this question by testing how the introduction of free banking laws between 1837 and 1863 affected bank competition […]