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Richard
N. Langlois is Professor of Economics at the
322 Monteith |
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Economics 201W
Economic History of
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Objectives.
This course studies the economic development of In general, the course will try to explain the
uniqueness of
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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:
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Rondo Cameron and Larry Neal, A Concise Economic History of the World.
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There are four other books at the bookstore from which
I will assign readings. |
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Jared Diamond, Guns,
Germs, and Steel. |
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Douglass C. North, Structure
and Change in Economic History. |
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Nathan Rosenberg and L. E. Birdzell, Jr., How
the West Grew Rich. |
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Niall Ferguson, Empire.
New York: Basic Books, 2004. |
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As this is a W course, I have also asked the bookstore
to order the following. See also my notes on writing. |
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Deirdre McCloskey, Economical
Writing. Waveland Press, 2nd edition, 1999. |
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Course
Requirements.
Your grade will be based on a midterm and a final.
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. . This is a W course,
which means heavy emphasis on writing.
It also means that the writing component of the course must count for
(at least) half the grade, and one cannot pass the course without passing the
writing component. For this course,
the writing component is a structured paper in
which you will survey the economic history of one European country of your
choice.
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Sequence
of topics.
1. Introduction:
social institutions and economic development. Richard N. Langlois, The Great Question,
Manuscript 2003. (On Vista.) Rondo Cameron and Larry Neal, A Concise Economic History of the World, chapter 1. Douglass C. North, Structure and Change in Economic History. New York: Norton, 1981,
chapters 1-6. Mancur Olson, Dictatorship,
Democracy, and Development, The
American Political Science Review 87(3): 567-576 (September 1993). 2. Prehistoric
and Ancient precursors. 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. Jane Jacobs, The Economy of Cities. New York: Random House, 1969, chapter
1. (On Vista.) Cameron and Neal, chapter 2. North, Structure
and Change, chapters 7-9. Robert C. Allen, Agriculture and the Origins
of the State in Ancient Egypt, Explorations in Economic History 34(2):
135-154 (April 1997). Peter Temin, The Economy of the
Early Bruce Bartlett, "How Excessive
Government Killed Ancient Rome," The Cato Journal 14(2), Fall 1994. 3. Feudalism. Cameron and Neal, Chapter 3. North, chapter 10. Stefano Fenoaltea, "Transaction
Costs, Whig History, and the Common Fields," Politics and Society
16(2-3): 171-217 (Summer, 1988).
(On Vista.) 4. The
revival of trade. North, chapter 11. 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, Milgrom, Paul, Douglass C. North, and Barry R.
Weingast, "The Role of Institutions in the Revival of Trade: the Law
Merchant, Private Judges, and the Champagne Fairs," Economics and
Politics 2: 1-23 (March 1990). (On Vista.) Avner Greif, The Birth of Impersonal Exchange: The
Community Responsibility System and Impartial Justice, Journal of Economic Perspectives 20(2): 221236 (Spring 2006).
(On Vista.) 5. The
guild system. Kohn, Chapter
16. 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). 6. Mercantilism:
comparative economic growth. Cameron and Neal, chapters 5 and 6. EH.Net
encyclopedia entry on the Glorious Revolution. Douglass C. North and Barry R. Weingast, "The Evolution
of Institutions Governing Public Choice in 17th Century England," Journal of Economic History 49: 803-32 (1989). Niall Ferguson, Empire.
7. The
Industrial Revolution. Cameron and Neal, chapter 7. Rosenberg and Birdzell, chapter 5. North, chapter 12. 8. The
Factory System. Rosenberg and Birdzell, chapters 6-9. 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. 9. The
nineteenth century. Cameron and Neal, chapters 8-12. Ferguson, Chapters 3, 4,
and 5. |
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