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EditorsClaude DieboltBETA/CNRS, University of StrasbourgInstitute for Advanced StudyStrasbourg, France
Michael HaupertUniversity of Wisconsin – La CrosseLa Crosse, WI, USA
ISBN 978-3-642-40405-4 ISBN 978-3-642-40406-1 (eBook)ISBN 978-3-642-40407-8 (print and electronic bundle)DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-40406-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015943062
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An Introduction to the Handbookof Cliometrics
Aims and Scope
The New Economic History (a term proposed by Jonathan Hughes) or Cliometrics
(coined by Stan Reiter), meaning literally the measurement of history, is of veryrecent origin. Its first practitioners are considered to be Alfred Conrad and John
Meyer, who published “Economic Theory, Statistical Inference, and Economic
History” in the Journal of Economic History in 1957 after its presentation earlier
that year at the joint meetings of the Economic History Association and the NBER
Conference on Research in Income and Wealth. They followed that up in 1958 with
a paper demonstrating the cliometric methodology as it applied to slavery in
antebellum America. Robert Fogel’s seminal research work on the impact of the
railroad on American economic growth is in extension a true revolution in the
history of economics, even a complete break with the tradition. It reestablished a
role for history in economics by expressing it in the language of the discipline.
Today, one can even say that it is an expanding domain in economics, contributing
to new debates and challenging conventional wisdom. The use of econometric
techniques and economic theory has contributed to the rejuvenation of economic
history debates, made quantitative arguments unavoidable, and contributed to the
emergence of a new historical awareness among economists.
Cliometrics does not concern economic history in the limited, technical meaning
of the term. It modifies historical research in general. It represents the quantitative
projection of social sciences in the past. The question of knowing whether slavery
benefited the United States before the Civil War or if railways had substantial
effects on the development of the US economy is as important for general history as
for economic history and will necessarily weigh on any interpretation or appraisal
(anthropological, legal, political, sociological, psychological, etc.) of the course of
American history.
Furthermore, cliometrics challenges one of the basic hypotheses of the idealistic
school: that history can never provide scientific proof because it is impossible to
subject unique historical events to experimental analysis. On the contrary, cliomet-
ricians have shown that such experimentation is possible by construction of a
counterfactual that can be used to measure the deviation between what actually
happened and what could have happened under different circumstances.
v
Robert Fogel famously used a counterfactual to measure the impact of the railroad
on American economic growth. This methodological principle is perhaps, along
with historical time series econometrics, the most important contribution of clio-
metrics for researchers in social science in general and historians in particular.
The Methodological Features
Fogel defined the methodological features of cliometrics. He considered it funda-
mental that cliometrics should stress measurement while recognizing the existence
of close links between measurement and theory. Indeed, unless it is accompanied by
statistical and/or econometric processing and systematic quantitative analysis,
measurement is just another form of narrative history. It is true that it replaces
words with figures, but it does not bring in any new factors. In contrast, cliometrics
is innovative when it is used to attempt to model all the explanations of past
economic development. In other words, the main characteristic of cliometrics is
the use of hypotheticodeductive models that call on the closest econometric tech-
niques with the aim of establishing the interaction between variables in a given
situation in mathematical form.
This generally consists of constructing a model – of general or partial equilib-
rium – that represents the various components of the economic evolution in
question and showing the way in which they interact. Correlations and/or causal-
ities can thus be established to measure the relative importance of each over a given
period of time.
The final ingredient of the cliometric approach concerns the concepts of a market
and price. Even in areas where there is no explicit market, the cliometric approach
will often study the subject by analogy with the market concepts of supply, demand,
and price.
So far, hypotheticodeductive models have mainly been used to determine the
effects of innovations, institutions, and industrial processes on growth and eco-
nomic development. As there are no records saying what would have happened if
the innovations in question had not occurred or if the factors involved had not been
present, this can only be found out by drawing up a hypothetical model used for
deducing a hypothesized alternative situation – i.e., the counterfactual. It is true that
the use of propositions contrasting with the facts is not new in itself. Such propo-
sitions are implicitly involved in a whole series of judgments, some economic and
others not.
The use of such counterfactual analysis has not escaped criticism. Many
researchers still believe that the use of hypotheses that cannot be verified generates
quasihistory rather than history proper. Furthermore, the results obtained by the
most elaborate cliometric applications have been less decisive than many cliomet-
ricians had hoped for. Critics are doubtless right to conclude that economic analysis
in itself, with the use of econometric tools, is unable to provide causal explanations
for the process and structure of change and development. There appear to be
nonsystematic breaks in normal economic life (wars, bad harvests, collective
vi An Introduction to the Handbook of Cliometrics
hysteria during market crashes, etc.) that require overall analysis but that are too
frequently considered as extrinsic and abandoned to the benefit of an a priori
formulation of theoretical suppositions.
Nevertheless, in spite of the disappointments resulting from some of its more
extreme demonstrations, cliometrics also has its successes, together with continu-
ous theoretical progress. The risk would obviously be that of allowing economic
theory to neglect a whole body of empirical documentation that can enrich our
knowledge about the reality of economic life. Conversely, theory can help to bring
out certain constants, and only mastery of theory makes it possible to distinguish
between the regular and the irregular and the foreseeable and the unforeseeable.
The Main Achievements
To date, the main achievements of cliometrics have been to slowly but surely
establish, in the Fogel tradition, a solid set of economic analyses of historical
evolution by means of measurement and theory and, following the path blazed by
Douglass North, to recognize the limits of neoclassical theory and bring into
economic models the important role of institutions. Indeed, this latter focus ulti-
mately spawned a new branch of economics altogether, the new institutional
economics. Nothing can now replace rigorous statistical and econometric analysis
based on systematically ordered data. Impressionistic judgments supported by
doubtful figures and fallacious methods and whose inadequacies are padded by
subjective impressions have now lost all credibility. Economic history in particular
should cease to be a “simple” story, illustrating with facts the material life during
different periods, and become a systematic attempt to provide answers to specific
questions. The ambition should be to move from the verstehen, or understanding, tothe erklaren, or explanation epistemology.
By extension, the more the quest for facts is dominated by the conception of the
problems, the more research will address what forms the true function of economic
history in the social sciences. This change of intellectual orientation, of cliometric
reformulation, can thus reach other human and social science disciplines (law,
sociology, political science, geography, etc.) and engender similar changes.
Indeed, the most vigorous new trend in the social sciences is without a doubt the
preoccupation with quantitative and theoretical aspects. It is the feature that best
distinguishes the concepts of the current generation of scholars from its forbears.
Even the most literary of our colleagues is ready to agree to this. There is nothing
surprising about this interest. One of the characteristic features of today’s younger
generation of scholars is most certainly that their intellectual training is much more
deeply marked by science and the scientific spirit than that of the generations that
preceded them. It is, therefore, not surprising that young scientists should have lost
patience with regard to the tentative approach of traditional historiography and have
sought to build their work on foundations that are less “artisanal.”
Human and social sciences are thus becoming much more elaborate in the
technical respect, and it is difficult to believe that a reversal of the trend is likely
An Introduction to the Handbook of Cliometrics vii
to occur. However, it is also clear that a significant proportion of human and social
scientists have not yet accepted the new trends aimed at using more elaborate
methodology and clear concepts conforming to new norms in order to develop, in
a Fogelian tradition, a truly scientific human and social science.
A Branch of History?
For many authors – and many of its protagonists – cliometrics appears to be first of
all a branch of history. Using economic tools, techniques, and theories, it provides
answers to historical, rather than economic, debates per se.
The meaning of the word “empirical” for (American) economic historians has
varied considerably with the passing of time. One can observe a shift from a
concept of empirical fact as understood by the “classical historian” (for whom
anything, as opposed to only quantitative data, retrieved from archives can be used
in his demonstration) to one as understood by (applied) economists (the empirical
aspect consists of analyzing numerical time series) and a convergence of theoretical
viewpoints of historians and economists thanks to a common interest in the building
of theories of development.
Here, Simon Kuznets seems to have played a key role by emphasizing the
importance of performing at the onset a serious macroeconomic analysis of the
major quantitative macrochanges in the past economic history before possibly
identifying certain sectors that are deemed central for economic development.
One should note that even in his concern to combine history with economic
analysis, he thought of a theory of development that remained inductively based
upon the observation of the major past evolution enlightened by the analysis of
long-run time series patiently accumulated by the economic historian.
This (inductive) view is therefore intimately linked with the historical current in
economics, the German Historical School, despite the use of more sophisticated
techniques. It could be said that the two disciplines became closer but probably
within the frame of “inductive” economics. On top of that, despite those early
interests in building a kind of historically (i.e., inductively) grounded development
economics, cliometrics mainly tried to provide answers to historiographical ques-tions – and therefore spoke more to the historian than to the standard economist.
Econometric techniques may be used with the reconstitution of time series and
identification of missing figures by interpolation or extrapolation – something, by
the way, that annoys professional historians. But these cliometric procedures have
nonetheless a historical vocation – that of shedding light on historical questions –
considering economic theory or econometrics as auxiliary disciplines of history.
And when the cliometric approach was mobilized to build a development theory
based upon clearly measured facts, it developed an economics more akin to the
objectives of the German Historical School than one participating in the movement
toward highly abstract and deductive theory that characterized the development of
the neoclassical school of the time.
viii An Introduction to the Handbook of Cliometrics
The conflict between Kuznets and Walt Rostow regarding the stages in eco-
nomic development was actually based upon the empirical foundations of Rostow’stheory and not at all on a debate concerning the shortcomings of a very inductive
and aggregate perspective lacking formal rigor (no use of growth theories) or
microfoundations, which would doubtless be the main subject of criticism today.
In short, either cliometrics is still a (modernized) branch of (economic) history – in
the same way as the modernization of methods in archaeology (from carbon-14
measurement to the use of statistical techniques such as discriminant analysis) does
not turn the discipline into a branch of natural science – or the cliometric approach
is mobilized to obtain theoretical results grounded more on induction from col-
lected time series than from a deductive explicit modeling exercise, i.e., economic
theory that must be primarily founded on facts and a generalization of empirical
evidence. In this way, it contributes to an economic science that is more related to
the German Historical School than to the neoclassical perspective.
An Auxiliary Discipline of Economics?
But this is not the end of the story. Some recent work in cliometrics performed by
economists (stricto sensu) reveals the possibility of a cliometrics that could also be
an auxiliary discipline of economics per se. As such, it should be part of the toolkit
and competencies of all economists. However, as the term auxiliary disciplineindicates, it could only fulfill its proper role for economics if it remains slightly
(not too much) outside the realm of standard neoclassical economics. It must be a
compound of the application of the newest econometric techniques and economic
theory with the old institutional and factual culture characterizing the old economic
history.
History is indeed always a discipline of synthesis. It should also be the case for
cliometrics. If not, if cliometrics were to be deprived of all its “historical dimen-
sions,” it would simply cease to exist (it would only be economics applied to the
past or mere retrospective econometric exercises). To be helpful for the economics
profession at large, its main job should be to mobilize all the relevant information
that can be gathered from history to enrich or even challenge economic theory
(or theories). And this relevant information should also include cultural or institu-
tional development, provided that they can be properly presented as useful for the
profession.
A conventional belief among economists (in fact that of Lord Kelvin) is that
“qualitative is poor quantitative.” But could it not be possible that “quantitative is
poor qualitative” might also sometimes be true? A big difference between econo-
mists and historians is the sense of so-called historical criticism and the desire to
avoid any anachronism. In addition to close examination of the historical sources,
this involves the close examination of the institutional, social, and cultural context
that forms the framework constraining the players’ behavior. It is true that the (new)
economic history will not build a general theory – it shares too strongly the belief in
the necessity of examining economic phenomena in their context – but it could
An Introduction to the Handbook of Cliometrics ix
suggest a few useful ideas and insights, based upon solid investigations and
correctly estimated stylized facts, to economists who are attempting to develop
laws of economic behavior (unlike history, economics is still a nomological sci-
ence). Economists and cliometricians can also cooperate and jointly author
research. This is a view shared by Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, James
Robinson, and Oded Galor, among others, trying to use the material derived from
traditional history to build new ideas useful for economic theorists.
In summary, it could be contended that a good cliometric practice is not an easy
exercise. Becoming too narrowly “economic,” it would not be possible for clio-
metrics to answer certain questions that would require, for example, more infor-
mation about the microstructure of financial markets or the actual functioning of
stock exchanges during the period under scrutiny – it would only measure phe-
nomena that it cannot explain. It would require the specific approach (and extrane-
ous information) of the historian to describe the reasons for the lack of relevance
(or understand the shortcoming) of such an economic theory in a given context
(precise place and period). It is perhaps only in this regard that cliometrics can
provide something for economists by suggesting lines of research. However, if it
became too “historical,” cliometrics would cease to appeal to the economics
profession. Economists need new economic historians aware of their debates and
their interests.
A Full-Fledged Field of Economic Theory?
Last, but not least, cliometrics could one day be more than just an ancillary
discipline of economics and instead become a full-fledged field of economic theory.
There is indeed another possibility: viewing cliometrics as the science of the
emergence of institutional and organizational structures, and that of path depen-
dence. Economic history would use the old techniques of the discipline coupled
with the state-of-the-art arsenal of econometrics in order to reveal stylized facts
about the efficiency of various institutional arrangements as well as the causes and
consequences of institutional change. It would help the theorist in developing a true
theory of institutional change, i.e., one that at the same time would be general
(serving the needs of policymakers today, for example) and theoretically solid
(grounded on economic principles) while solidly grounded on empirical regularities
as put forward by a joint economic and historical analysis. This analysis of
institutional morphogenesis would be the true theoretical part of a cliometric
science that would emancipate itself from its apparently purely empirical fate –
being the playing ground of long-run econometricians. It is clear that economists’
desire for generality and their fascination for the mathematical science do not
encourage them to pay too much attention to contextualization. However, neoinsti-
tutionalist economists like North warn us to seriously consider institutional (includ-
ing cultural) contexts.
Our ambition for the Handbook of Cliometrics was thus also aimed at encour-
aging economists to examine more systematically these theories grounded upon
x An Introduction to the Handbook of Cliometrics
history and nevertheless aiming at the determining general laws on the creation of
institutions or of institutional changes. Beyond the study of long-run quantitative
data sets, a branch of cliometrics is more and more focused on the role and
evolution of institutions by aiming at combining the economist’s desire for gener-
ality with the concern for the precise context in which economic players act that
characterizes historians and other social scientists. This middle road between pure
empiricism and disincarnate theory might perhaps open the door to a better eco-
nomic theory. This will enable economists to interpret current economic issues in
the light of the past and, in so doing, understand more deeply the historical working
of economies and societies. This is the path to offering better policy advice for
today.
The Contents
When putting together a handbook such as this one, the most difficult question is
what to include. The possibilities were endless, but the space was limited. Topics
that are not included are not by any means considered to be lacking in importance or
historical significance. We simply had to make difficult choices, and in the end, we
decided that variety over time, topic, and geography would be our goal. The final
selection of chapters represents a sampling of the topics that cliometrics has helped
to transform over the past half century. It ranges from those that have long been at
the center of cliometric analysis, such as Greg Clark’s chapter on the industrial
revolution and Larry Neal’s chapter on financial markets, to chapters on narrower
topics that have been developed largely as a result of the cliometric approach, such
as the age heaping work discussed by Franziska Tollnek and Joerg Baten and
Thomas Rahlf’s contribution on statistical inference. In between, we have included
articles by Peter Temin and Stanley Engerman, who began plying their trade when
cliometrics really was the “new” way of studying economic history, and young
scholars who represent the next generation of cliometicians, like Matt Jaremski and
Emanuele Felice. The common link in the chapters is the focus on the contributions
of cliometrics.
The Handbook of Cliometrics is a milestone in the field of historical economics
and econometric history through its emphasis on the concrete contribution of
cliometrics to our knowledge in economics and history. It is a work of tertiary
literature. As such, it contains digested knowledge in an easily accessible format.
The articles are not original research or review articles but rather an overview of the
contributions of cliometrics to the topic of discussion. The articles stress the
usefulness of cliometrics for economists, historians, and social scientists in general.
The Handbook offers a wide range of topical coverage, with each article providing
an overview of the contributions of cliometrics to a particular topic.
The book is organized into 7 sections, grouping the 22 contributions by general
topic, starting with 2 chapters on the history of economic history and cliometrics.
The first is Michael Haupert’s brief overview of the evolution of economic history,
highlighting the literature in the history of the discipline that begot cliometrics and
An Introduction to the Handbook of Cliometrics xi
shaped its development. Peter Temin also looks at the past to explain the present
state of cliometrics and then goes further, using recent contributions to the literature
to make some predictions about the future of cliometrics as a discipline, highlight-
ing the ways in which economic history and economic development benefit from
their interaction. Both of these articles emphasize the growth of the influence of
cliometrics on the field of economic history.
The second section focuses on human capital, beginning with broad topical
coverage by Claudia Goldin, who focuses on institutions that encourage investment
in human capital. In particular, she looks at two major components of human
capital: education and health. Robert Margo provides an extensive review of
clio’s contributions to historical labor markets, using the United States as his
backdrop. Lee Craig’s essay on standards of living highlights some of the lessons
we have learned from merging cliometrics with the fields of demography, biology,
and nutrition. This is followed by two specific surveys of the role of clio in age
heaping and church book registry. Franziska Tollnek and Joerg Baten show how
age heaping has been used to shed light on topics as diverse as education, gender
gaps, and cross-country differentials in long-run growth. Jacob Weisdorf looks at
how church book registries have been used to look at similar questions.
Section 3 takes the big picture into consideration with five papers on economic
growth. We begin with an essay on growth theories and the contribution of
cliometrics to them by Claude Diebolt and Faustine Perrin, followed by Greg
Clark’s look at the industrial revolution. Clark looks at the change in productivity
growth rates and the impact of institutions and human capital on growth. James
Foreman-Peck surveys the cliometric models used to explain the demographic
transition that led to modern economic growth, and Emanuele Felice discusses
historical estimates of GDP. Finally, Markus Lampe and Paul Sharp look at the
contributions of clio to international trade.
Section 4 focuses on financial markets. Larry Neal enumerates three reasons why
cliometricians study financial markets. These include an increased appreciation for
the role they play in growth and development, the availability of vast data sets, and
improved analytical techniques. John James contributes an essay on payment
systems, noting the similarities between their development and the evolution of
economic institutions. He focuses on the role of cliometrics in building applicable
data sets and analyzing them in novel ways, such as network modeling. Matt
Jaremski provides an exhaustive survey of empirical approaches to the study of
financial panics, while Caroline Fohlin examines the role of financial systems in
economic development.
In Section 5, Jochen Streb and Stanley Engerman and Nathan Rosenberg offer
two takes on the role of clio in our study of the history of innovation. Engerman and
Rosenberg stress that since theoretical models cannot deal with the full complexity
of the process of invention and innovation, some historical study is necessary to
develop a full understanding of these processes. Streb discusses the cliometric
impact on the use of patent statistics to model invention and innovation.
The section on statistics and business cycles has essays by Thomas Rahlf on
statistical inference and Terence Mills on the use of cliometrics to study trends,
xii An Introduction to the Handbook of Cliometrics
cycles, and structural breaks. Rahlf gives a historical overview of the emergence of
concepts of particular interest to cliometricians. Mills looks at the evolution of
methods of calculating trends and growth rates.
Finally, we turn to the role of government. Price Fishback looks at the New Deal
and how its effects on the Depression have been modeled. Jari Eloranta takes a
broader view of the role of government – in scope, time period, and geography –
when he looks at war and the many ways it has been analyzed by economists,
historians, and sociologists, among others.
We enjoyed the process of putting the handbook together. What began as an
innocent query (Why isn’t there a handbook of cliometrics?) grew into a final
project that we are excited to share with you. The process was long and exhausting
but worthwhile. The result is an assemblage of top scholars analyzing the role that
cliometrics has played in the advancement of knowledge across a wide array of
topics.
Shortly before the final touches were put on the handbook, we were deeply
saddened by the sudden and unexpected loss of one of our contributors. John James
was one of the first to finish a chapter, enthusiastically agreeing to our request and
delivering his essay on payment systems a few months later. Sadly, he passed away
on November 28, 2014. For all those who knew John, his enthusiasm, scholarship,
and dedication to the project were predictable. His loss will be felt by all of us. In
his memory, we dedicate this handbook to cliometricians everywhere.
Claude Diebolt
Michael Haupert
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xiv An Introduction to the Handbook of Cliometrics
Preface
Welcome to the Handbook of Cliometrics, a part of the Springer Reference Library.In order to foster world-class research, the handbook includes economists and
economic historians of the highest caliber from around the world. It is a milestone
in the field of historical economics and econometric history through its emphasis on
the concrete contribution of cliometrics to our knowledge of economics and history.
Cliometrics dates formally to the joint meeting of the Economic History Asso-
ciation and the Conference on Research in Income and Wealth (under the purview
of the NBER) in 1957. The concept of cliometrics, the application of economic
theory and quantitative techniques to the study of history, is somewhat older.
Regardless of its precise origin, this focus on the use of theory and formal modeling
that distinguishes cliometrics from “old” economic history has redefined the disci-
pline and made an indelible mark on economics. The works in this handbook
recognize these contributions and highlight them in a variety of subdisciplines.
The handbook is a work of tertiary literature. As such, it contains digested
knowledge in an easily accessible format. The chapters provide an overview of
the contributions of cliometrics to various subdisciplines in the field of economic
history. Each one stresses the usefulness of cliometrics for economists, historians,
and social scientists in general.
A project of this size and scope does not come to a successful conclusion without
the contributions of many people. We want to thank all those who helped to bring
this idea to fruition and see it through to its conclusion. First and foremost, we thank
our authors, who have produced articles of the highest quality under demanding
deadlines and through numerous drafts. Their time and expertise are what elevates
this handbook to the highest level. We also need to thank the editorial and
production team, who turned this work from concept to final printed and online
product: Martina Bihn, who nourished our idea from the beginning and guided us
through the long process from idea to output, and Karin Bartsch, our primary editor,
who kept us on task and provided copious and valuable advice at every turn. Many
thanks also to Michael Hermann and Nicholas Philipson for their unconditional
support. We would also like to thank the Board of Trustees of the Cliometric
Society, who inspired us to carry on with our initial proposal to create a handbook.
xv
Finally, we would be remiss if we did not thank our spouses, Valerie and Mary
Ellen, who put up with late nights over computers, long days at the office, and our
general demeanor as we stared down deadlines, all while working at their careers
while tolerating our obsession.
January 2015 Claude Diebolt
Michael Haupert
xvi Preface
Contents
Part I History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
History of Cliometrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Michael Haupert
Economic History and Economic Development: New Economic
History in Retrospect and Prospect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Peter Temin
Part II Human Capital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Human Capital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Claudia Goldin
Labor Markets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Robert A. Margo
Nutrition, the Biological Standard of Living, and Cliometrics . . . . . . . 113
Lee A. Craig
Age-Heaping-Based Human Capital Estimates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Franziska Tollnek and Joerg Baten
Church Book Registry: A Cliometric View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Jacob Weisdorf
Part III Growth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Growth Theories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Claude Diebolt and Faustine Perrin
The Industrial Revolution: A Cliometric Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Gregory Clark
Economic-Demographic Interactions in Long-Run Growth . . . . . . . . . 237
James Foreman-Peck
xvii
GDP and Convergence in Modern Times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
Emanuele Felice
Cliometric Approaches to International Trade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
Markus Lampe and Paul Sharp
Part IV Finance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
Financial Markets and Cliometrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
Larry Neal
Payment Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
John A. James
The Cliometric Study of Financial Panics and Crashes . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
Matthew Jaremski
Financial Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
Caroline Fohlin
Part V Innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431
Innovation in Historical Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433
Stanley L. Engerman and Nathan Rosenberg
The Cliometric Study of Innovations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
Jochen Streb
Part VI Statistics and Cycles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469
Statistical Inference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471
Thomas Rahlf
Trends, Cycles, and Structural Breaks in Cliometrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509
Terence C. Mills
Part VII Government . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 535
Cliometrics and the Great Depression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537
Price Fishback
Cliometric Approaches to War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 563
Jari Eloranta
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 587
xviii Contents
About the Editors
Claude Diebolt is a CNRS research professor of eco-
nomics and a fellow of the University of Strasbourg
Institute for Advanced Study. His research focuses on
the cliometrics of growth and economic cycles. He is
the founder, the publication director, and the managing
editor of the journal Cliometrica. He is also the
founding president of the Association Francaise de
Cliometrie, the chairman of the board of trustees of
the Cliometric Society, and the Economic History
Association representative at the International
Economic History Association. Claude Diebolt’s
research has been published in more than 30 books and in around 125 academic
journals such as the American Economic Review, the Journal of Monetary Eco-nomics, the Journal of Macroeconomics, Explorations in Economic History, theEuropean Journal of the History of Economic Thought, etc. His work has been
translated into Chinese, Czech, English, German, and Spanish.
Michael Haupert is Professor of Economics at the
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and Executive
Director of the Cliometric Society. His research inter-
ests are the economic history of the sports and enter-
tainment industries and the history of the economic
history discipline. He previously served as the editor
of the newsletter of the Cliometric Society and
currently edits the newsletter of the Economic History
Association, for which he has begun writing a series of
biographies of past presidents of the Association.
He has authored two books on the history of the enter-
tainment industry in America and has published more
than 100 articles in journals such as Cliometrica, The Journal of Economic History,The Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, and The Journal of EconomicEducation.
xix
Contributors
Joerg Baten University of Tuebingen and CESifo, Tuebingen, Germany
Gregory Clark University of California, Davis, CA, USA
Lee A. Craig Department of Economics, North Carolina State University,
Raleigh, NC, USA
Claude Diebolt BETA/CNRS, University of Strasbourg Institute for Advanced
Study, Strasbourg, France
Jari Eloranta Appalachian State University and University of Jyvaskyla, Boone,
NC, USA
Stanley L. Engerman Department of Economics, University of Rochester,
Rochester, NY, USA
Emanuele Felice Departament d’Economia i d’Historia Economica, Universitat
Autonoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra (Cerdanyola del Valles), Barcelona, Spain
Price Fishback Economics Department, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
Caroline Fohlin Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA and Emory
University, Atlanta, GA, USA
James Foreman-Peck Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK
Claudia Goldin Department of Economics, Harvard University and National
Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, USA
Michael Haupert University of Wisconsin – La Crosse, La Crosse, WI, USA
John A. James Department of Economics, University of Virginia, Charlottesville,
VA, USA
Matthew Jaremski Colgate University and NBER, NY, USA
Markus Lampe Universidad Carlos III Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Robert A. Margo Boston University and National Bureau of Economic Research,
Boston, MA, USA
xxi
Terence C. Mills School of Business and Economics, Loughborough University,
Loughborough, UK
Larry Neal Department of Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA
Faustine Perrin BETA/CNRS, University of Strasbourg Institute for Advanced
Study, Strasbourg, France
Thomas Rahlf German Research Foundation, Bonn, Germany
Nathan Rosenberg Department of Economics, Stanford University, Emeritus,
Stanford, CA, USA
Paul Sharp University of Southern Denmark, Odense M, Denmark
Jochen Streb Abteilung Volkswirtschaftslehre, Lehrstuhl f€ur Wirtschafts-
geschichte, Universitat Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany
Peter Temin Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Cambridge, MA, USA
Franziska Tollnek University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany
Jacob Weisdorf University of Southern Denmark and CEPR, Odense M,
Denmark
xxii Contributors
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