Web shopping

Brad Delong remembered about economic history for the first time in a while and posted about Bob Allen’s book; well the post is mostly a quotation but I really liked the comments.

The Pivot of Global History: The Handoff from the First to the Second Industrial Revolution

Bob Allen of Oxford writes the smartest thing I have read in at least a year. The conclusion of Robert Allen (2009), The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 9780521687850), p. 272 ff.:

I have argued that the famous inventions of the British Industrial Revolution were responses to Britain’s unique economic environment and would not have been developed anywhere else…. Buy why did those inventions matter?…. Weren’t there alternative paths to the twentieth century? These questions are closely related to another… asked by Mokyr: why didn’t the Industrial Revolution peter out after 1815?… [O]ne-shot rise[s] in productivity [before] did not translate into sustained economic growth. The nineteenth century was different–the First Industrial Revolution turned into Modern Economic Growth. Why? Mokyr’s answer… that scientific knowledge increased enough to allow continuous invention [is incomplete]….

More here.

De Vries J. (2005) The Dutch Atlantic economies

De Vries, Jan (2005) “The Dutch Atlantic Economies”, in  Peter A. Coclanis, ed., The Atlantic Economy During The Seventeenth And Eighteenth Centuries: Organization, Operation, Practice, And Personnel, Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, p.1-10.

Buy the book on line.

Initial forays

The Dutch started venturing outside the European waters in the late 16th century. This first Dutch Atlantic economy was built upon small private commercial partnerships (partenrederijen) drawn up usually for the duration of the voyage and led by an active partner who participated to the trip (p.2).

Saint Catherine

The Martyrdom of St Catherine, by Lucas Cranach

May she be with all of you.

Celebration

Today was my 100th reading note (including one lost I don’t know how and one I was forced to withdraw)!!!

Hancock D. (2003) Madeira wine: the rise of a trans-imperial market economy

Hancock, David J. (2003) “L’émergence d’une économie de réseau (1640-1815). Le vin de Madère”, Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 58/3, 649-672.

English version available here (pdf).

The Atlantic during the early modern period became a coherent “functional unit” integrating three continents; as such it is an essential concept for historians (p.649). In the 18th century in particular the economic linkage intensified (p.650). The rise of the Madeira wine is part of this decentralized and self-organized growth of an integrated Atlantic space.

Lovejoy P. and Richardson D. (2001) Pawnship in West Africa during the slave trade

Lovejoy, Paul E. and Richardson, David (2001) “The Business of Slaving: Pawnship in Western Africa, c.1600-1810”, The Journal of African History, 42/1, 67-89.

“The institution of pawnship, specially the use of people as collateral for credit, helped underpin the Atlantic slave trade” (p.68). Leaving people as collateral solve the trust issue attached to credit (p.69).

Several types of pawnships existed (p.70). Europeans often reported the habit for one to pawn himself if too poor to survive. People also often offered themselves as collateral for a credits and  if they failed to repay, they became slaves for debt (p.71). In domestic trade the use of pawns to guarantee a debt seem to have been fairly common in 18th-century West Africa. The institution seems to have been indigenous (p.72).

Web shopping

Robert J. Samuelson’s “Economists out for lunch“

And the very interesting Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database

On Peter L. Bernstein

I recently found out about Peter L. Bernstein (1919-2009), a popular American economist and financial historian. I must confess I haven’t read any of his books, but will surely read them after having learned from his life.

Drelichman M. and Voth H.-J. (2008) Was Golden Age Spain cursed?

Drelichman, Mauricio and Voth, Hans-Joachim (2008) “Institutions and the Resource Curse in Early Modern Spain”, in Helpman, Elhanan; ed. Institutions and Economic Performance, Cambridge, Ma: Harvard University Press, 34p.

This paper is available here (pdf).

Introduction

During the late 16th and 17th century, the Spanish crown defaulted several times on its debts, growth was sluggish and population eventually shrank (p.4). The cause of this failure has been known for a while: the ‘resource curse’, or in other words, the “undesirable economic outcomes associated with natural resources abundance”.

The most famous of these symptoms has been called the ‘Dutch disease’. In that case, the resource-oriented sector of the economy attracts in priority the production factors, thus depleting the innovation-rich manufactory sector and making the country dependant on import, thus deteriorating the terms of trade (p.5).

Web shopping

Acemoglu et al. on how the French invasions during the Revolutionary and  Napoleonic Wars induced later economic growth in the regions invaded (via Oxonomics).

Krugman on being called Malthusian.

A good page on the Second Serfdom on Answers.com.

The (long, long, long) biography of Juan de Mariana by Jesus Huerta de Soto.

And finally a summit of libertarians in Salamanca devoted to the famed university considered by these people as the ‘Birthplace of Economic Theory’. Political biais aside, it looks like an interesting event, unfortunately those idiots think people can go to the the western fringes of Castilla in the middle of a work week…