Economics
201
Fall
2001
MWF
9-9:50
HRM 303
Room
322 Monteith
Office
hours: MWF 11-12
or by appointment
Objectives. This course studies the
economic development of Europe from prehistoric times to the early twentieth
century. Although the course is chronological, the vastness of such a history
necessarily means that we will be selective in our treatment, focusing on a few
episodes and approaches.
In
general, the course will try to explain the uniqueness of Western Europe. Why
was Western Europe (including Great Britain) able to achieve sustained economic
growth in a way that no other part of the world - including the great
civilizations of history - was able to do?
Textbooks. As there is no single text
that covers the material in the way I wish to present it, the lectures in this
course will be extremely important. (Do not expect to do well if you do not
come to class religiously). The closest thing we will have to a textbook is
·
Rondo Cameron, A
Concise Economic History of the World. (Oxford, 1996.)
There
are four other books at the bookstore from which I will assign readings.
·
Jared Diamond, Guns,
Germs, and Steel. New York: Norton, 1997.
·
Douglass C. North, Structure
and Change in Economic History. New York: Norton, 1981.
·
Nathan Rosenberg and L. E. Birdzell, Jr., How the West Grew Rich. New York: Basic
Books, 1986.
·
Joel Mokyr, The
Lever of Riches. New York: Oxford, 1990.
I have
also placed some readings on reserve in Babbidge Library.
Internet. Note that a number of readings
below are available electronically. Note also that, for copyright reasons, some
links are accessible only from computers connected to the Internet through the
UConn domain. If you live off campus and are connecting through a private ISP,
check with the computer center about something called a proxy server. Many articles available on the web are in Adobe
Acrobat (PDF) format. To read them, you will need the Adobe Acrobat reader.
This should already be installed on University microlab computers. But if you
don't have it, you can download it for free.
Other useful links. EH.Net maintains a
website with links to a wide range of resources related to economic history.
The Internet Medieval
Sourcebook contains a wealth of links on medieval economic history. I may
add more links as the semester progresses, so check back regularly.
Course Requirements. Your
grade will be based on two midterms and a final.
Midterm 1 |
30% |
Midterm 2 |
30% |
Final |
40% |
The
final will be cumulative, but will stress the material covered after the second
midterm. The exams will be mostly essay, but they may also contain some
matching, identification, or true/false components.
Sequence of topics.
1. Introduction: social institutions and
economic development.
Douglass
C. North, Structure and Change in Economic
History. New York: Norton, 1981, chapters 1-6.
Joel
Mokyr, The Lever of Riches. New York:
Oxford, 1990, chapters 7 and 11.
2. Prehistoric and Ancient Europe.
Jared
Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel, as
much as you can, but especially the prologue and chapters 1, 3, 4, 5, 10, 11,
12, 13, and 14.
Rondo
Cameron, A Concise Economic History of
the World, chapter 2.
North, Structure and Change, chapters 7-9.
Bruce
Bartlett, " How Excessive Government
Killed Ancient Rome," The Cato Journal 14(2), Fall 1994.
3. Feudalism.
Cameron,
Chapter 3.
North,
chapter 10.
Carl
Dahlman, The Open Field System and
Beyond. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980. (On reserve: HD604.D33.)
Stefano
Fenoaltea, "Transaction Costs, Whig History, and the Common Fields,"
in B. Gustafsson, ed., Power and Economic Institutions: Reinterpretations in
Economic History, Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1991, pp. 107-169 (On reserve:
HC21.P68 1991.)
4. Mercantilism.
Cameron,
chapters 5 and 6.
Avner
Grief, Paul Milgrom, and Barry Weingast, "Coordination,
Commitment, and Enforcement: the Case of the Merchant Guild," Journal
of Political Economy 102(4): 745-776 (1994).
Robert
B. Ekelund and Robert D. Tollison, Mercantilism
as a Rent-seeking Society : Economic Regulation in Historical Perspective.
College Station, Tex. : Texas A&M University Press, 1981. (On reserve: HB91.E4.)
5. The revival of trade.
Douglass
C. North and Barry W. Weingast, "The
Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in 17th Century England,"
Journal of Economic History 49: 803-32 (1989).
Nathan
Rosenberg and L. E. Birdzell, Jr., How
the West Grew Rich, chapter 4.
Meir
Kohn, The Origins of Western Economic Success:
Commerce, Finance, and Government in Pre-Industrial Europe. Manuscript, Dartmouth College.
6. The Industrial Revolution.
Cameron,
chapter 7.
Mokyr, , chapter 5.
Rosenberg
and Birdzell, chapter 5.
7. The Factory System.
Rosenberg
and Birdzell, chapters 6-9.
Axel
Leijonhufvud, "Capitalism
and the Factory System," in R. N. Langlois, ed., Economics as a Process: Essays in the New Institutional Economics.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986, pp. 203-223.
Richard
N. Langlois, "The Coevolution
of Technology and Organization in the Transition to the Factory System,"
in Paul L. Robertson, ed., Authority and
Control in Modern Industry. London: Routledge, 1999.
8. Britain in the nineteenth century.
Cameron,
chapters 8 and 9.
William
Mass and William Lazonick, "The British Cotton Industry and International
Comparative Advantage: the State of the Debates," Business History 32:
9-65 (October 1990). (On the third floor of Babbidge Library.)
Since
8/24/01